What is the Wonderlic test?

How the Wonderlic Test Works

Allowing only a short amount of time for one to answer so many questions puts the test-taker under tremendous stress to achieve the best score possible, which can be predictive of someone's ability to perform under stress; not just that, it can allow those observing the test-takers to see at what point someone begins to give into the pressure and make mistakes. With that, the Wonderlic test has been proven rather effective at correctly predicting an individual's future performance, so much so that its effectiveness and precision allowed it evolve down other avenues, eventually breaking into sports, as well as the armed services.

Test Design & Methodology

As an intelligence test, it is designed to output results in a manner similar to the Stanford-Binet test, which provides a Bell curve with most scores concentrated in the center of the curve (the same way that the average IQ score of 100 falls in the center on standard IQ tests). Several versions of the Wonderlic test have been developed to gauge a variety of personal traits, such as skill, cognitive ability, behavioral liability, and personality.

Modern Applications

With a specialized set of tests, the Wonderlic test is now used by Fortune 100 companies, sports franchises, private enterprises, institutions, and governments to predict the success of new employees and recruits with an accuracy of 94 percent. Given its unique method of introducing complex and structured problems to users under increasingly stressful circumstances, coupled with a shrinking allotment of time, the Wonderlic test has quickly grown to become the preferred method of evaluating and predicting someone's ability to perform intelligently under pressure.