Significant other
person's partner in an intimate relationship
The term "significant other" (SO) has different uses in psychology and in colloquial language. Colloquially, "significant other" is used as a gender-neutral term for a person's partner in an intimate relationship without disclosing or presuming anything about marital status, relationship status, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Synonyms with similar properties include sweetheart, other half, better half, spouse, domestic partner, lover, paramour, soulmate, and life partner.
The psychology concept has a broader scope: "significant other" refers to any person who has great importance to an individual's life or well-being.
Scientific use
Its usage in psychology and sociology is very different from its colloquial use. In psychology, a significant other is any person who has great importance to an individual's life or well-being. In sociology, it describes any person or persons with a strong influence on an individual's self-concept. Although the influence of significant others on individuals was long theorized, the first actual measurements of the influence of significant others on individuals were made by Archie O. Haller, Edward L. Fink, and Joseph Woelfel at the University of Wisconsin.
Haller, Fink, and Woelfel are associates of the Wisconsin model of status attainment. They surveyed 100 Wisconsin adolescents, measured their educational and occupational aspirations, and identified the set of other individuals who communicated with the students and served as examples for them.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Significant other” as person's partner in an intimate relationship. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as person's partner in an intimate relationship. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11493441. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Significant other” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.