Personality type and mathematics anxiety factors affecting remedial college freshman.

摘要

College students taking remedial mathematics often exhibit high degrees of mathematics anxiety. Factors relating to this anxiety were hypothesized to include personality types as determined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Students taking a remedial mathematics course patterned after the Keller Plan in a suburban midwestern university participated in a study associating mathematics anxiety with MBTI personality type.;Although the personality types themselves did not relate to mathematics anxiety, specific classifications were found that did moderately associate with mathematics anxiety. Classifications of F (feeling) on the feeling-thinking subscale and of I (introvert) on the extrovert-introvert subscale were significantly correlated with mathematics anxiety as measured by a second-generation derivative of the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS).;A linear model was constructed to determine whether a combination of the certain background and experiential factors could predict mathematics anxiety change. The model failed to significantly predict the mathematics anxiety change. However, the combination of the specified background factors did significantly predict the existence of mathematics anxiety. The strongest predictors were negative feelings about mathematics, high school mathematics background, and classifications of F and I on the MBTI.;The decrease in the level in mathematics anxiety was highly significant over the five weeks time period, but the design was not sufficiently robust to allow determination of a relationship of this decrease with the use of the modified Keller Plan format in the course.