New research suggests that nervousness and discomfort in relation to math could help people perform better in the subject.

In two studies, researchers Zhe Wang of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Stephen Petrill of The Ohio State University, and colleagues found that a moderate level of math anxiety was associated with high math performance among students who reported high math motivation -- that is, among students who reported that they valued math and embraced math challenges. For those who are low in this kind of math motivation, however, high math anxiety appears to be linked with low math performance.

"Our findings show that the negative association between math anxiety and math learning is not universal," Wang and Petrill said in the study. "Math motivation can be an important buffer to the negative influence of math anxiety."

For the first study, the researchers collected and analyzed data from 262 pairs of same-sex twins. The children, about 12 years old on average, completed measures of math anxiety and math motivation. They also completed six tasks aimed at measuring math performance, tapping skills like representing numerical quantities nonverbally and spatially, calculating with fluency, and using quantitative reasoning in problem solving.

They found that for children who reported low levels of math motivation, increases in math anxiety were associated with poorer performance. For children who reported high math motivation, the relationship between math anxiety and performance resembled an inverted U shape: Performance increased with anxiety, reaching peak levels with moderate anxiety. As anxiety increased beyond this midpoint, math performance decreased.

Researchers conducted a second study with 237 college students to make sure the results of the first study were robust. Again, they found that math anxiety was related to poor math performance among students who reported low math motivation, while students who reported high motivation showed the inverted-U relationship between anxiety and performance.

"These findings suggest that efforts that simply aim to decrease math-anxiety level may not prove effective for all students," Petrill said. "Although math anxiety is detrimental to some children in their math learning, motivation may help overcome the detrimental effects of math anxiety. In particular, for children highly motivated to better learn math moderate level of math anxiety or challenge may actually prove efficacious."

The findings are detailed in the journal Psychological Science.