are these general couples or couples that met online? There is definitely a whole different dynamic to meeting someone physically and how that body language and actual time to converse changes their perception (not swipe and try to woo them with a text message).
You're not even getting 5 seconds on a dating app if you don't have the right looks or right pitch. I always had an idea for one of those trashy Blind Date reality shows with a premise of "would you swipe right on your SO/Spouse?". because we're never getting organic data for that.
I have learned a lot about this in the zoo with my daughter. Adults become extremely uncomfortable and want to go away when the children find the human-like behavior of apes funny. To me it seems that our animal nature is too much for most people to psychologically accept.
That is why I completely avoid that discussion in general and here in particular.
Dating app popularity can be easily observed and we don't need to go into that discussion at all.
Can you provide an example? I don't disagree, I just don't know if you're talking about bullying or what.
If you spend some time watching our closest ancestors, you start to see that they have lot of common gestures with humans. It is difficult to thoroughly explain this using just words.
Evo-psych explanations break down when you look at actual couples, I think. I recall a study where people ranked each other with 1-9, and they found that the stated preference was similar to what you describe, with women prefering the higher ranked men, and vice-versa but with the men having wider spread preferences. But when they looked at actual couples it was far more random with "9"s paired with "5"s and so on. (I can't find a link but maybe someone else finds it?) In reality, common interests and similar social milieus are probably the most important factors.