The gender gap in math anxiety (and in the link between math anxiety and math performance) is not so salient when other anxieties are controlled for

Math anxiety (MA) is considered to affect math performance and the choice of math-related educational paths, thus contributing to the gender gap in STEM careers. However, despite decades of research, the mechanisms underlying the relationships between gender, MA, and math performance remain largely unclear. One of the reasons is that different types of anxiety and math performance levels are rarely controlled for. To address this research gap, we tested the associations between gender, MA, spatial anxiety, emotional stability, state anxiety, test anxiety, and math performance in a sample of 269 adults. We replicated previous findings that spatial anxiety in areas of navigation and mental manipulation, but not imagery, mediates the relationship between gender and MA. Importantly, in light of previous contradictory findings, we found that math performance significantly mediated this relationship. Most notably, we found that gender, spatial anxiety, emotional stability, state anxiety, test anxiety, and math performance together explain 70% of the variance in MA. We conclude that the commonly reported gender gap in MA is less pronounced when other anxieties are controlled for, especially given that we did not observe gender differences in the strength of the relationship between MA and math performance.