Definition Of Mathematics Anxiety

Webster’s New Word Dictionary explains anxiety as worry or uneasiness about what may happen. Freud (1924) defined anxiety as “something felt,” a specific unpleasant emotional state or condition that included feeling of apprehension, tension, worry and physiological arousal, and equated with fear with objective anxiety, which he considered to be an emotional in its intensity to a real danger in the external world.

Tobias & Weissbrod (1980) defined mathematics anxiety as “the panic, helplessness, paralysis and mental disorganization that arises among some people when they are required to solve a mathematical problem. Meanwhile, Ashcraft & Faust (1994) also defined mathematics anxiety as feelings of tension, apprehension, or even dread that interferes with the ordinary manipulation of number and the solving of mathematical problems. Like stage fright, mathematics anxiety can be disabling condition, causing humiliation, resentment, and even panic. Mathematics anxiety can cause one to forget and lose one’s self confidence (Tobias, S., 1993).