Wings

Picture the nine types arranged around a circle in numerical order. A wing is the influence of whichever type sits on either side of your core type on that circle. Type Four sits between Three and Five, so a Four's two possible wings are Three and Five; Type Nine sits between Eight and One, wrapping the circle back around.

A wing doesn't change your core type. It colours it — a Four with a Three-wing tends to channel its emotional intensity into visible achievement and image; a Four with a Five-wing tends to channel it inward, into withdrawal and private depth. Same core motivation, a different accent on how it plays out day to day.

Most people can recognize something of both adjacent types in themselves. In most teaching, a wing names whichever shows up more.

The nine core types describe nine distinct motivations. A wing adds no new motivation; it describes a flavour of expression layered onto one of the nine, borrowed from one of its two neighbours. Two people can share a core type and still come across quite differently at a dinner party, a work meeting, or in an argument, and the wing accounts for part of that.

A Four leaning toward its Three-wing is written 4w3; leaning toward Five, 4w5. The notation names the core type and the neighbouring flavour. It isn't a second type or a blend with its own description.

Some teachers also describe a person's leading type in each of the three centres at once. That layer, developed by Katherine Chernick Fauvre, is outside this library's scope.

Schools disagree on whether most people lean clearly toward one wing or draw on both fairly evenly depending on circumstance. Sources differ; the question is open.

Wing nicknames — Riso and Hudson's habit of naming each of the eighteen wing combinations ("the Idealist" for one, say) — are that school's own coinage, layered on top of their nine core-type names. This site describes what a wing adds in plain language.

Hook and colleagues' 2021 review (summary) of the research literature found the wing concept, like the stress-and-growth lines, has little specific empirical support: the studies that exist don't strongly back the idea that a type reliably picks up traits from one particular neighbour and not the other.

Wings are a traditional descriptive layer, passed down through the teaching lineage, not derived from data. They describe variation between two people who share a core type; they are not a mechanism agreed on across schools the way the centres and core types are.

Don't let an uncertain wing hold up the core-type question. The wing is a secondary refinement; settle core type first.