Steven Hertler, Psy.D.

Steven Hertler , Psy.D.

Psychology I Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Advisor

Email: shertler@steu.eduPhone: (973) 290-4027

Dr. Hertler joined the SEU Psychology Department full time in 2021 after teaching as an adjunct instructor since 2014 – PSY331 Biological Basis of Behavior, PSY706 Physiological Psychology, PSY403 Seminar in Social Psychology and PSY705 Human Learning. Previously, he taught Rorschach Methods, Developmental Psychology, Psychopathology and other courses at Pace University, Caldwell University and the College of New Rochelle.

Dr. Hertler earned a B.S. in Psychology from the State University of New York and a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology from Pace University. As a licensed psychologist in New York and New Jersey, Dr. Hertler specializes in psychological assessment and diagnosis, and provides legal, educational, vocational, and clinical evaluations through his practice, Psychodiagnostics.

In the capacity of an examining psychologist, Dr. Hertler worked at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center for three grant-funded programs, while also providing assessments for Morristown Memorial Hospital, East Newark Schools and Specialized Therapy Associates.

Research Interests

Biologically-based personality variation
Gene-environment interactions, niche selection, niche construction, experience producing drives, and related interactions between genetic and environmental sources of individual differences
Cliodynamics, an empirical approach to analyzing historical cycles
Human evolution and ecology
Histories documenting evolutionary change resulting from social, industrial and agricultural revolutions, or recorded by warfare, pestilence, migration, famine and related demographically relevant trends

Peer Reviewed Publications

Hertler, S. C. (2013). Understanding obsessive compulsive personality disorder: Reviewing the specificity and sensitivity of DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria. Sage Open, 3, 1-10.

Hertler, S. C. (2014). A review and critique of obsessive compulsive personality disorder etiologies: Reckoning with heritability estimates. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 10, 168-184.

Hertler, S. C. (2014). The continuum of conscientiousness: Antagonistic interests among obsessive and antisocial personalities. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 45, 52-63.

Hertler, S. C., Krauss, H. H., & Ward, A. (2014). Personality and personal persistence in the postmodern self. International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities, 8, 1-21.

Hertler, S. C. (2015). Using urgent states to understand obsessive traits: Promoting a phenomenological apperception of obsessive compulsive personality disorder. International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities, 8, 20-25.

Hertler, S. C., Krauss, H. H., & Ward, A. (2015). Assessing diachronic reasoning: Exploratory measures of self-change in young adults. Psychological Reports, 116, 176-193.

Hertler, S. C. (2015). Migration load, ecological opportunity, and obsessive compulsive personality disorder etiology: Obsessive character as an adaptation to seasonality. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 1, 52-67.

Hertler, S. C. (2015). The evolutionary logic of the obsessive trait complex: Obsessive compulsive personality disorder as a complementary behavioral syndrome. Psychological Thought, 8, 17– 34.

Hertler, S. C. (2015). Estimates & implications of obsessive compulsive personality disorder

(OCPD) prevalence: OCPD as a common disorder with a cosmopolitan distribution or rare strategy with a northerly distribution? Psychological Writings, 8, 1-12.

Hertler, S. C., Krauss, H. H., & Ward, A. (2015). The postmodern self: Personal persistence and its absence in contemporary life narratives. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 0022167815586666

Hertler, S. C. (2015). Toward biology of collectivism: Reducing the East-West divide to its physical and physiological substrates. Sage Open, 5, 1-14.

Hertler, S. C. (2015). Obsessive personality as an adaptive anachronism: The operation of phylogenetic inertia upon obsessive populations in Western Modernity. Psychological Topics, 2, 207-232.

Hertler, S C. (2015). Crossing the paradigmatic divide in personality: Coming to an evolutionary understanding of personality variation. Journal for Philosophy and Psychiatry, http://www.jfpp.org/116.html?&no_cache=1&sword_list%5B%5D=hertler

Hertler, S. C. (2016). The biology of obsessive compulsive personality disorder symptomatology: Identifying an extremely K-selected life history variant. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2, 1- 15.

Hertler, S. C. (2016). The biologically-based bias of personality disorder diagnosis. Frontiers in Psychology: DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01293

Figueredo, A.J., Cabeza de Baca, T., Fernandes, H.B.F., Black, C. J., Peñaherrera, M., Hertler, S. C., García, R. A., Meisenberg, G., & Woodley of Menie, M. A. (2017). A sequential canonical cascade model of social biogeography: Plants, parasites, and people. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 3, 40–61.

Hertler, S. C. (2017). Beyond birth order: The biological logic of personality variation among siblings. Cogent Psychology, 4, 1-18.

Hertler, S. C. (2017). Closing on a note of conciliation: On the attempt to reconcile science and religion at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Human Origins. Museums & Social Issues, 12, 1-10.

Hertler, S. C. (2018). Psychological perceptiveness in Pushkin’s poetry and prose. Janus Head, 16(2), 54- 79.

Fernandes, H. B., Lynn, R., & Hertler, S. C. (2018). Race differences in anxiety disorders, worry, and social anxiety: An examination of the differential-K theory in clinical psychology. Mankind Quarterly, 58(3).

Dunkel, C. S, Hertler, S. C., de Baca, T. C., & Mathes, E. W. (2018). The identification of life history strategy in a short projective test. Human Ethology Bulletin, 33, 3-14.

Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Hertler, S. C., Figueredo, A. J., Fernandes, H. B. F., & Cabeza de Baca, T. C. (2019). A social biogeography of homicide: Multilevel and sequential canonical examinations of intragroup unlawful killings. Evolutionary Behavioral Science, 18, 2330-2925.

Dunkel, C. S, Hertler, S. C., de Baca, T. C., & Mathes, E. W. (2019). Projective tests as indicators of life history strategy: Evidence using Loevinger’s sentence completion test. Current Psychology, 1-8.

Figueredo, A. J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Fernandes, H. B. F., Lomayesva, S. L., Hertler, S. C., & Sarraf, M. A. (2019). War and peace: A diachronic social biogeography of life history strategy and between-group relations in two Western European populations. Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences, 10(1), 36-75.

Figueredo, A. J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Fernandes, H. B. F., Lomayesva, S. L., Hertler, S. C., & Sarraf, M. A. (2019). The ecology of empire: The dynamics of strategic differentiation-integration in two competing Western European biocultural groups. Politics and the Life Sciences, 38(2), 210- 225.

Figueredo, A. J., Hertler, S. C., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M. (2021). The biogeography of human diversity in life history strategy. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 15(1), 10–26.

Figueredo, A.J., Hertler, S.C , & Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M. (2021). The biogeography of human diversity in cognitive ability. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 7, 106–123.

Hertler, S. C. de Baca, T. C., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Figueredo, A.J. (2022). Life history evolution forms the foundation of the adverse childhood experience pyramid. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 8, 89-104.

Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M, Figueredo, A. J., Jurgensen, J. M., Woodley of Menie. M. A. & Hertler, S. C. (2022). Macrohistorical and evolutionary dynamics of between-group competition, sociopolitical complexity, and differentiation-integration effects. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 9, 90-118.

Figueredo, A. J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Hertler, S. C. (2022). Systems of adversity, psychological distress, and criminality. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.

Hertler, S., Perñaherrera-Aguirre, M., & Figueredo, A. J. (2023). An evolutionary explanation of the Madonna-Whore Complex. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 9, 372–384.

Tapia-Fonllem, C. O., Valenzuela Peñuñuri, R., Beltrán Sierra, N., Nieblas Soto, N., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Figueredo, A. J., & Hertler, S. C. (2024). The Madonna–whore complex: An empirical test of evolutionary hypotheses. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000356

Figueredo, A. J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., & Hertler, S. C. (2025). Ancestral and contemporary influences of sociopolitical complexity, macroeconomic development, and state functioning on the quality of infrastructure. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 11, 115–131.

Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Albuja-Sánchez, J., Figueredo, A. J., & Hertler, S. C. (2025). Ancestral and contemporary influences of sociopolitical complexity, macroeconomic development, and state functioning on the quality of infrastructure. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 1-17.

Academic Books

Hertler, S. C. (2017). Life history evolution and sociology: The biological backstory of coming apart. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Woodley of Menie, M. A., Figueredo, A. J., Sarraf, M. A., Hertler, S., Fernandes, H. B. F., & Aguirre, M. P. (2017). The rhythm of the West: A biohistory of the Modern era, AD 1600 to present. Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies Monograph Series, Volume 37.

Hertler, S. C., Figueredo, A. J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Fernandes, H. B. F., & Woodley of Menie, M. A. (2018). Life history evolution: A biological meta-theory for the social sciences. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hertler, S. C., Figueredo, A.J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M. (2020). Multilevel selection: Theoretical foundations, historical examples, and empirical evidence. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hertler, S. C., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Figueredo, A.J. (2025). Presidential Age: How and why normal cognitive aging impairs chief executives. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Figueredo, A. J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., & Hertler, S. C. (2025). Coevolution of mutualistic species assemblages: Extended hypersociality and extended ultrasociality. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Hertler, S. C., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Figueredo, A.J. (2025). The evolution of political ideology: A natural and civil history. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Book Chapters

Figueredo, A. J., Fernandes, H. B. F., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., & Hertler, S. C. (2018). The evolution of personality: Building on Buss. In P. Corr (Ed.), Personality and individual differences: Revisiting the classic studies. London: Sage.

Hertler, S. C. (2019). A second Bonaparte: Searching for the character of Alexander Hamilton. In, D. N. Hagist (Ed.) Journal of the American Revolution: Annual volume 2019. Yardley, Pennsylvania: Westholme Publishing.

Figueredo, A. J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Hertler, S. C., & Woodley of Menie, M. A., (2020).

Social Biogeography. In, T. K. Shackelford (Ed.), The Sage handbook of evolutionary psychology. New York: Springer.