Logic Study Guide for the Wonderlic Personnel Test

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General Information

A modest percentage of the questions on the Wonderlic® test involve using logic. These questions generally fall into four categories. The following types of questions may be present on the test, so it’s worth your time to get to know how they work and how to answer them quickly.

Logic questions require you to take the information given and use mental reasoning to figure out the correct answer. The trick is to use all of the information given and solid reasoning skills but not insert any other knowledge you may have into finding the answer.

The reasoning required may involve if/then types of questions, spatial reasoning, shape patterns, and spatial visualization. Read on to learn more about these four types of questions and how to address them in a minimum amount of time.

Deductive Reasoning

This is the only type of logic question on the Wonderlic® test that is language-related. You will be given two statements and asked to suppose they are both true. Considering only the truth of those statements, you are then asked to tell whether a third statement is true, false, or uncertain. You will have to ignore the fact that some of the statements may not be true in the outside world but for the purpose of answering the questions, you must assume that they are. For example, if the statement says that all horses have braided manes, you must accept that to answer the question. Here’s how that might look:

If the first two statements are true, is the third statement true?

All horses have braided manes.
Rainy is a horse.

Rainy has a braided mane.

____ yes
____ no
____ uncertain

Even though you know that all horses do not have braided manes, your answer would have to be yes because, according to the first statement, they do.

The questions on the test will probably not be this clear-cut, so let’s try a few more:

Susan loves cats.
Susan’s friend, Megan, has two cats.

Susan visits Megan a lot.

The answer to this one would have to be uncertain. You would think that Susan would visit Megan often, but there could be all sorts of other considerations. Susan might love cats but also be allergic, which would prevent her from visiting. The cats might not be friendly to everyone, etc. Just these two statements alone do not guarantee the truth of the third. And you can’t answer no to this question because nothing in the first two statements definitely proves the third statement to be false.

Here’s another one:

In a straight row of houses, Carrie lives beside Mark.
Mark lives between Carrie and Susan.

Susan lives beside Carrie.

With questions like this one, about people or objects in a certain order, it may be helpful to quickly sketch the situation on your scratch paper, placing the first letter of each person’s name in a diagram according to where the question says they live. If the question says two people live next to each other, place their letters beside each other.

You’d have to answer no to this one because there is no way Susan could live beside Carrie if Mark lives between them, unless the houses were in a small circle. This cannot be the case due to the information given in the first statement.

Note: Only choose the answer no for one of these questions if there is information in the first two statements that disproves the third statement. Otherwise, choose uncertain.

Some of this type of question on the test are easier than others. If you get into one of them and find yourself having to read it over and over, skip it and go on.

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