I have struggled with my relationship with math for almost as long as I can remember. In early elementary school I was simply ambivalent towards the subject, but when teachers stopped letting us illustrate fractions using M&M’s the relationship turned hostile. Math classes turned into battles, rife with anger and despair and dread. Some nights after a particularly bad piece of homework, I would lay in bed and ask myself: “am I terrible at math because I hate it, or do I hate math because I’m terrible at it?”
Growing up, I was an above-average student due in large part to the encouragement of my parents and teachers. From an early age, my parents were very involved in my schoolwork and as a result, I received good grades and other positive feedback from my teachers. This cycle of positive feedback allowed me to enjoy school, and also caused me to work harder to ensure that I would continue to receive the positive feedback. Years of this pattern allowed me to develop a positive academic self-concept, which can be defined as viewing one’s academic performance in a positive light, including and perhaps especially when compared to other students (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012).
Math, unfortunately, was a large black spot within my academic self-concept that just got bigger as I entered middle school. I was often punished for receiving lower grades in math than in my other classes, because the assumption was that I just wasn’t putting in the effort. My parents firmly believed in my ability to succeed, and had trouble understanding why I was getting low B’s in math and A’s in my other classes. I had trouble understanding it too, for that matter. My other friends, who were almost always boys, were not experiencing the same issues with the subject, despite the fact that my grades were typically better than theirs. When I complained to them about my math issues, they explained that girls are worse than boys at math and advised me to let it go. This stung quite a bit because I was at a stage in my life where I believed that being compared to other girls was an insult, because I thought other girls were stupid and silly (yes, I had some serious internal misogyny going on, there).
Once I realized that my friends expected me to do worse in math because of my gender, I generalized it to my teachers and my family as well. I felt that being a girl was a handicap, and by performing poorly at math I was reinforcing the handicap and reminding everyone of my failure. Far from inspiring me to get better grades, these feelings increased my anxiety surrounding my math performance, and my grades dropped to C’s. The increased anxiety that girls experience due to fears that poor performance in math confirm the stereotype that girls are bad at math is called “stereotype threat”, and it has a proven impact on the math performances of women (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). According to one study, if women were even subtly reminded of the stereotype that women are bad at math, their performance on math tests declined significantly (Vedantam, 2012). It’s thought that because of the worry of conforming to the stereotype, women are using fewer of their cognitive resources to answer the math questions, which hurts their performance. This anxiety made my math performance worse, and caused me to dislike every moment of every math class I took in middle school.
When I reached high school my overall academic performance continued to be above average, and my teachers often gave me special projects and books that they felt would challenge and interest me. Their attentions reinforced my academic self-concept even further, and school was still largely enjoyable. This did not extend to math. My grades continued to be low, and my relationships with my teachers were strained, with one finally saying to me “I just don’t understand why you’re not grasping these concepts.” Neither did I, and frankly I was sick of it. I was tired of putting in three times the effort into my math classes and still getting bad results. I began to not work as hard at learning the concepts, and instead focused on learning just enough functional math to trudge through the homework and pass the tests. I didn’t truly understand how the math concepts worked or fit together or why they mattered, but I knew what equations to get me by. On the nights before math tests I would put off studying until it was late at night and I was too tired, and then blame my poor performance on a lack of studying. This behavior is called self-handicapping, which happens when people behave in ways that may negatively impact their performance, so they can use the behavior as an excuse for their poor performances rather than their abilities (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). I likely engaged in this self-handicapping behavior because I didn’t want to face the fact that although I was good at other subjects, math did not and probably never would come as easily to me.
As an adult, math still does not come easily to me. My college math classes have been a struggle, but I was able to at least recognize the value of statistical concepts, which made the subject easier to pay attention to and work at. Although I am still not positive whether I am terrible at math because I dislike it or because I’m actually just terrible at it, I now at least have the tools to recognize and overcome self-handicapping when it happens.
References:
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Vedantam, S. (2012, July 12). How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science. Retrieved February 18, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/2012/07/12/156664337/stereotype-threat-why-women-quit-science-jobs