Px Archetypes
The Archetypes
The word archetype simply means a recurring pattern — a shape that keeps showing up. In our own Px assessments we identify a handful of them, each representing a different role people give to the world. One is yours.
Why animals?
Animals are intuitive. You don’t need a psychology degree to picture a stag holding its ground or an otter playing in the current. Each animal captures something essential about a way of being in the world — a core drive that people recognise immediately in themselves or in the people around them.
They also travel well. Animals work across many cultures, across languages, and across the gap between formal assessment and everyday conversation. You can tell someone you’re a Fox and they already have a picture forming. That matters when the goal is self-knowledge that you can actually use.
Where do they come from?
The animals were originally inspired by the Enneagram — a personality framework that identifies core motivational patterns — but Px is a motivational-styles model, not an Enneagram instrument. We use the Enneagram’s recognisable motivational shapes as a starting point, then add patterns the nine-type tradition doesn’t have a clean home for.
That’s why we now have eleven animals rather than nine. The additions (Bear, Beaver, Chameleon) cover real motivational patterns in the general population that the original nine miss — patterns the data clearly shows but the classical Enneagram quietly absorbs into other types or doesn’t name at all. Eleven covers the population better.
Your archetype is one dimension of who you are, part of your whole picture.
Meet the archetypes
Find out more about each animal at whatworldway.com/what →
The Stag
Nobility, standards
The Dolphin
Empathy, nurturing, support
The Eagle
Vision, possibility, momentum
The Fox
Individuality, creativity
The Owl
Knowledge, analysis
The Wolf
Loyalty, vigilance
The Otter
Invention, experiment, play
The Lion
Courage, leadership
The Bear
Stillness, presence, harmony
The Beaver
Construction, framework, foundation
The Chameleon
Consistency, function, presence
Want to know how the Archetypes were derived — Big Five facet profiles, Enneagram heritage, how the boundaries between archetypes were drawn?
Read the science of What →The animal archetypes are one of three facets in what-world-way. Combined with a world and a colour, each becomes a unique portrait of who someone is.
Explore the combinations on whatworldway.com →Which one are you?
Find your what-world-way at whatworldway.com — a few minutes, no account needed. The three tests run in order and your full portrait is waiting at the end.