Girls Have More Math Anxiety Than Boys

If the thought of a math test has you breaking out in sweats, you'd be glad to know that it's actually a medical condition called "mathemetics anxiety" and that you're not alone.

Math anxiety is a vicious circle: having math anxiety hurts performance in math, which makes the sufferer even more anxious and so on.

Now, new research shows that girls have more math anxiety than boys:

"These results might suggest that girls may have had the potential to perform better than boys in mathematics, however, their performance may have been attenuated by higher levels of (mathematics anxiety)," the research team from the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford write online today (July 9) in the journal Behavioral and Brain Functions. [...]

They found that test anxiety was also linked to poor mathematics performance, but this link was stronger for girls than boys.

Wayne Parry of LiveScience explains: Link