Higher math anxious people have a lower need for cognition and are less reflective in their thinking

•Math anxious individuals have a lower need for and enjoyment of exerting cognitive effort.•math anxiety mediates a relation between need for cognition and math achievement.•Math anxious individuals are less reflective in their thinking. There exists a large body of literature seeking to understand the relation between math anxiety and success in mathematics. While most of this literature focuses on domain specific relations (i.e., how math anxiety impacts thinking about mathematics), in the current work we examine important relations between math anxiety and domain general factors. Specifically, we test three hypotheses: (1) that higher-math-anxious individuals have a lower need for and enjoyment of exerting cognitive effort, (2) that math anxiety mediates a relation between ones’ propensity for cognitive effort and their achievement in mathematics, and (3) that higher-math-anxious individuals are less reflective in their thinking, and that this is not limited to questions that are heavily reliant on mathematical reasoning. As predicted, we uncovered relations between math anxiety and the domain-general constructs of need for cognition and cognitive reflection. Importantly, these negative relations hold even after controlling for math ability, general anxiety, and gender of the participant. The results are discussed in terms of implications for our understanding of the construct of math anxiety. Proficiency in mathematics is a major advantage in industrialised nations. Unfortunately, many people experience math-anxiety (Richardson & Suinn, 1972), becoming nervous when engaging in math tasks and avoiding math and math-related professions. As a result, those with math anxiety tend to severely limit their future career and earning opportunities (Chipman, Krantz, & Silver, 1992; Hembree, 1990). The resulting shortage of adults prepared to work in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics field (STEM) has negative consequences at the national level, particularity as societies become increasingly dependent upon technology (Beilock & Maloney, 2015; Chipman et al., 1992; Maloney & Beilock, 2012). Worldwide, increased math-anxiety is linked to decreased math achievement (Foley et al., 2017; Lee, 2009), and this is not limited to academic situations. Math-anxious nurses, for example, are more likely than non-math-anxious nurses to make poor drug calculations (Mcmullan, Jones, & Lea, 2012); math-anxious women are more likely than their peers to engage i