Dating apps are a way to gain insight into psychology. If you don't use dating apps, the preferences remain.

I was never as appalled as I was when watching very successful, intelligent female friends of mine use Tinder. The shallowness of it is unparalleled. The quickness with which they'd reject perfectly good looking people was hard to believe.

There's a lot to say about how the structure and dynamics. of a tool guide how we use it, and that's very much at play here.

These same people acted FAR different in the outside world. I think the notion of a complete lack of scarcity leads our brains in this unachievable quest for perfection (based on nothing but a picture).

I'd say get off the platform, but you also have to go where the people are! I'm just glad I'm not dating anymore.

I'm not denying there's a preference. I'm saying dating apps amplify them by putting them front in centre. Where as you meet and have a good rapport with someone IRL you're not probably not sitting there thinking "Wait is he an inch shorter than my minimum height on tinder?"

Datings apps change the way the game is played. Meeting people in real life is not like "meeting" someone via pictures and a bio.

Dating apps are a way to gain insight into how UX manipulates desire + how applications produce behavioral statistics which we then clumsily project into iron laws of psychology.

[citation needed]

My additional accecdata: it's really, really not. Even for an individual, stated preferences are often not that true in practice.