Further clarity on the cause of the aromatic residual is gained by looking into the distribution of the -electrons. The -electron population in S0 is more evenly spread in 7, followed by 9, and lastly by 8, in line with the results of Figure . In contrast, in the 3 n,* state of 9 the -electron distribution is clearly more uniform than in the other two species due to the high symmetry of the former (see Tables ). In fact, the -electron population is even more evenly distributed in this state than in the S0 state. Looking into the spin distributions, there is an accumulation of the excess πα-electrons around the N atoms of 9. For 7 and 8, both the παand the πβ-electrons are quite localized at the N atoms and at certain C atoms (different for each of the spins), leading to a less uniform π-electron distribution and lowered aromaticity for both spins. Conversely, in D2h symmetric 9, despite some accumulation around the N atoms, the distribution of πβ-electrons is forced by symmetry to be more uniform (all C atoms have the same π-electron population), which explains the aromaticity increase of the MCIβ-component.