Anxiety disorders are some of the most widespread mental health issues worldwide. In educational settings, individuals may suffer from specific forms of test and performance anxiety that are connected to a knowledge domain. Unquestionably, the most prominent of these is math anxiety. Math anxiety is a widespread problem for all ages across the globe. In the international assessments of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies, a majority of adolescents report worry and tension in math classes and when doing math. To understand how math anxiety takes effect, it has to be regarded as a variable within an ensemble of interacting variables. There are antecedents that facilitate the development of math anxiety. They concern environmental factors such as teachers’ and parents’ attitudes toward their students’ and children’s ability in math, societal stereotypes (eg, on females’ math abilities), or personal factors such as traits or gender. These antecedents influence a number of variables that are important in learning processes. Math anxiety interacts with variables such as self-efficacy or motivation in math, which can intensify or counteract math anxiety. Outcomes of math anxiety concern not only performance in math-related situations, they can also have long-term effects that involve efficient (or not-so-efficient) learning as well as course and even vocational choices. How can math anxiety be counteracted? A first step lies in its correct diagnosis. Questionnaires for the assessment of math anxiety exist for all age groups, starting at primary education level. Help against math anxiety can be offered on different levels: by educational institutions, by teachers and a change in instructional approaches, by parents, or by the affected person. However, much more research is needed to develop effective measures against math anxiety that are tailored to an individual’s characteristics and needs.

It’s possible to assume that women who study STEM topics with a low proportion of females have successfully overcome barriers in school and the family, making them less prone to stereotypic views and influences. The present study focuses on these kinds of factors and analyzes to which degree family factors, school-related factors, and individual stereotypes may influence a woman’s academic self-concept. The following presents a latent regression model which is based on a survey of 296 women from different German universities, all of whom are part of STEM programs of study that have less than 30% females. It was investigated to which degree individual stereotypes, support in school, and family support contribute to the self-concept in STEM. Gender stereotypes were negatively related to students’ STEM-specific self-concept in the selected sample. This study also reveals negative family-related influences that lower a woman’s self-concept. Positive predictors on the other hand included school aspects that are found in the students’ favorite subjects at school. The results of the study provide important aspects for STEM education. Even though the students participating in the study presumably had good grades in STEM, stereotypes still corrupted their self-concept. One of the reasons for this might lie in stereotypes that attribute girls’ achievements to diligence instead of talent. The results also point out that direct support, particularly by parents, can have a negative impact on female students’ self-concept. Activities that are meant to support pupils directly may actually backfire and transport stereotypes instead. This stresses the need for indirect support during socialization, e.g. by providing opportunities for children to have positive experiences or by giving them the chance to meet role models that are enthusiastic about their STEM professions. These kinds of measures have the potential to spur students’ interest in STEM subjects – something that in the present study proved to be especially beneficial for women’s positive self-concept when studying STEM topics.

In many social science majors, e.g., psychology, students report high levels of statistics anxiety. However, these majors are often chosen by students who are less prone to mathematics and who might have experienced difficulties and unpleasant feelings in their mathematics courses at school. The present study investigates whether statistics anxiety is a genuine form of anxiety that impairs students’ achievements or whether learners mainly transfer previous experiences in mathematics and their anxiety in mathematics to statistics. The relationship between mathematics anxiety and statistics anxiety, their relationship to learning behaviors and to performance in a statistics examination were investigated in a sample of 225 undergraduate psychology students (164 women, 61 men). Data were recorded at three points in time: At the beginning of term students’ mathematics anxiety, general proneness to anxiety, school grades, and demographic data were assessed; two weeks before the end of term, they completed questionnaires on statistics anxiety and their learning behaviors. At the end of term, examination scores were recorded. Mathematics anxiety and statistics anxiety correlated highly but the comparison of different structural equation models showed that they had genuine and even antagonistic contributions to learning behaviors and performance in the examination. Surprisingly, mathematics anxiety was positively related to performance. It might be that students realized over the course of their first term that knowledge and skills in higher secondary education mathematics are not sufficient to be successful in statistics. Part of mathematics anxiety may then have strengthened positive extrinsic effort motivation by the intention to avoid failure and may have led to higher effort for the exam preparation. However, via statistics anxiety mathematics anxiety also had a negative contribution to performance. Statistics anxiety led to higher procrastination in the structural equation model and, therefore, contributed indirectly and negatively to performance. Furthermore, it had a direct negative impact on performance (probably via increased tension and worry in the exam). The results of the study speak for shared but also unique components of statistics anxiety and mathematics anxiety. They are also important for instruction and give recommendations to learners as well as to instructors.