Wonderlic, working memory capacity, and fluid intelligence

Abstract

Despite the widespread popularity of the Wonderlic Personnel Test, evidence of its validity as a measure of intelligence and personnel selection is limited. The present study sought to better understand the Wonderlic by investigating its relationship to multiple measures of working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. Our results show that Wonderlic has no direct relationship to fluid intelligence once its commonality to working memory capacity is accounted for. Further, we found that the Wonderlic was a significant predictor of working memory capacity for subjects with low fluid intelligence, but failed to discriminate as well among subjects with high fluid intelligence. These results suggest that the predictive power of the Wonderlic could depend on the characteristics of the sample it is administered to, whereas the relationship between fluid intelligence and working memory capacity is robust and invariant to the cognitive capabilities of the sample.