I should clarify my previous post thusly:
1. I do find the material of math interesting. Unlike psychology or economics, I'm not usually actually curious about math. I certainly don't feel curious about unresolved problems in math. But once I see what's there, I do tend to really enjoy it. So in terms of interest, math is maybe like art for me. I'm not actually curious to see new art, but if I find myself in a gallery I will often super enjoy what I find there.
2. Is math a relative weakness for me? My best guess is that it's somewhere in the middle of my talents. But it may be only that I have gotten far enough in math to see my own limitations, while only skimming the surface of other subjects. It may be that I only imagine that I would kick more ass in some other field. I find that quite plausible. Also, of course, the nature of math is such that it's somewhat objective whether you're succeeding or failing. I might be able to wrongly believe that my essay on Macbeth is a work of genius, but a proof either works or it doesn't.
3. Do I prefer subjects I fear failing at? Perhaps not. I think it's more likely that my disinclination to work means that I'm more likely to work hard if I'm moderately afraid than if I'm pretty confident, and of course, as I've mentioned before, more work = more enjoyment, at least for me. (Is this true for other people? Do you prefer a difficult 2-hour hike to an easy one, after it's all over?) There is also kind of no superficial level of math. You can read a book like How the Mind Works and feel like you have a grasp of cognitive psychology, but even the equivalent lay math book will require work and thought to grasp (again, at least for me). You either work hard and get something out of it or you don't and...don't.
So I guess what I'm saying is, contra modern wisdom, all-or-nothing thinking and a slight lack of self-efficacy are drivers of my math success.
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I think this imagining of competence is a major driver of math anxiety. MOST people think they are competent at pretty much anything they do, and the less competent, the more they think they are. Unlike most things, math education provides constant feedback as to how incompetent you really are.
So people fear math tests in the way they might, say, an Lit paper, even though they will manage to handle most of technical details of the math assignment, but their responses on their Lit paper will be banal, boring, and stupid. However, because they spelled the words right and formatted it in the approved 5x5 type format, they got their B. The teacher won't be able to provide useful feedback (Be more creative! Think better!) , and they won't be able to see the difference between their B and their classmate's A, which allows them to assume the teacher just hates them. In math, however, they can see all of the red ink marking the wrong answers, and they can see the right answers on their classmates' test, and so they can't rationalize away their relative lack of performance.
This comment is not original to me, btw, but rather has been shaped by many conversations with Sally about the topic.
Yeah, I think you're probably right. And the comprehension issue is similar as well - I could read a brilliant essay on pretty much any topic and feel that I've understood it completely while actually missing substantial elements (either of the argument itself or of its historical, political, philosophical, etc. significance). In math it is far more obvious when you don't understand something.
Hah, I read rvman's post thinking, Yeah, I agree!
I think the fact that in many fields, what constitutes good work appears very subjective allows people to BS themselves about their own competence. (I say "appears" because it is possible/likely that there may be a subjective element to whether a given math proof is elegant and many fields are less subjective than people think.)
Relative to other academic subjects, it becomes pretty obvious if you are reading something in math and don't understand it, sort of like you quickly can tell you don't understand an essay written in Portuguese. The sometimes superficial relationship between language used in academic work and normal life makes it easier to just slide along with a sense of understanding.
Of course, then a person takes the GRE and bombs the reading comprehension section and rather than realizing they don't understand things as well as they think they do, they just hate the bastards at ETS.
Clarification: when I was talking about subjects appearing subjective, I meant this to mean that people view subjects *other than math* (and maybe some of the sciences) as objective but humanities/social sciences as more subjective.
I understood what you said originally but, oddly, not your clarification. (?)
That's because the clarification doesn't make sense. This is what happens when I don't re-read what I've written before I post it. I changed my mind about how I was going to express myself halfway through the sentence, always risky. Strike the "other than" and we should be back to the previous statement.
Well, that's a relief. I thought maybe it was your subtle way of pointing out that my reading comprehension is as weak as my math ;-)
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