Psychological Bulletin, Vol 152(3), Mar 2026, 288-325; doi:10.1037/bul0000517
Reading anxiety is the fear of reading and is theorized to be negatively associated with reading achievement. An inability to engage in reading due to either low reading achievement or high reading anxiety could be debilitating. Research on reading anxiety and its association with reading achievement was first explored in the 1980s but has been an area of rapidly increasing investigation in recent years. The goal of the present preregistered meta-analysis and systematic review was to determine the strength of the association between reading anxiety and reading achievement. Through systematic screening of the published and unpublished literature, 64 studies (totaling 180 effect sizes and 14,467 participants) were identified and included in the meta-analysis. The included studies were conducted in 14 countries and 11 languages. Analyses were performed using random-effects models, accounting for dependent effect sizes via robust variance estimation. A significant moderate negative average weighted correlation was found between reading anxiety and reading achievement (r = −.30, p