Spatial Anxiety and Spatial Ability: Mediators of Gender Differences in Math Anxiety

Females tend to be more anxious than males while engaging in mathematics, which has been linked to lower math performance and higher math avoidance. A possible repercussion of this gender difference is the underrepresentation of females in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), as math competencies are an essential part of succeeding in such fields. A related, but distinct, area of research suggests that males tend to outperform females in tasks that require spatial processing (i.e., the ability to mentally visualize, rotate, and transform spatial and visual information). Interestingly, factors from the spatial processing domain (spatial ability and spatial anxiety) are important in explaining gender differences in math anxiety. Here, we examined three types of spatial anxiety and ability (imagery, navigation, and manipulation), as well as math ability, as mediators of gender differences in math anxiety. Undergraduate students (125 male; 286 female) completed assessments of their general level of anxiety, their math anxiety, and their spatial anxiety. They also completed a series of tasks measuring their mathematical skill, their spatial skills, and basic demographics. Results suggest that manipulation anxiety and ability, navigation anxiety, and math ability explained the gender difference in math anxiety, but manipulation anxiety was the strongest mediator of this relation. Conversely, all other measures did not explain the gender difference in math anxiety. These findings help us better understand the gender difference in mathematics, and this is important in reducing the gender gap in STEM fields.