Imagine if a woman said she "wanted" a list of alpha traits. A big, strong, muscular man who would have his way with her (that pretty much sums up those personality traits about mental strength and so on) and also is beyond her in intelligence, ambition, etc.

It would be obvious, wouldn't it, that her mind was on sex? And that's not going to get her approval/status/prestige, is it?

What you say you want in someone, whether you're a woman or a man, says something not just about that someone, it also reveals a lot about you for saying it.

I think women are very conscious of this. Their social position depends on them presenting themselves as having their mind on relationships that are considered prestigious or high-status. Thus, she answers the question "What do you want?" as if the question was actually "What would you say you wanted if you wanted to increase your prestige or social status?"

You can translate most such questions this way. "What would you say about X if you wanted to increase your status?" is how men and women both answer almost everything, perhaps women more than men.

Humans in general are social animals and social thinkers, it's just that women embody that more than men. Only rarely does someone answer questions so as to communicate truth as opposed to adjust their own status, and it's mostly nerds doing it.