Kriti Mehrotra
It was in 1971 when a psychological experiment helmed by Professor Philip Zimbardo began with a group of willing participants, only to be shut within days rather than the planned two weeks. That’s because, as explored in Hulu’s ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth,’ it ended up being one of the most horrific penitentiary environment stimulations ever undertaken. In fact, one of the volunteer guards, David “Dave” Eshelman, even walked away with a rather negative reputation, considering he was allegedly the most brutal and sadistic in this whole ordeal.
Dave Eshelman Has Long Maintained He Had Put on a Persona
Born in the early 1950s in the Bay Area of California as one of four kids of renowned electrical engineers plus Stanford Professor Von Eshleman and Patricia Middleton, Dave was always a performer. He was fortunate to have the unwavering support of his tight-knit family at every step of the way, enabling him to partake in all sorts of theater productions growing group. Therefore, it is unsurprising that he was attending Chapman University, pursuing a Bachelor’s in Journalism, Media, and Music (1970-1974) at the time of the experiment.
In Dave’s own terms, when he was selected to join the Stanford Prison Experiment, he “consciously created” his guard persona, patterning himself after an abusive warden in the movie ‘Cold Hard Luke.’ Therefore, everything he did there was not him but a character he had developed and was allegedly encouraged by Professor Phillip Zimbardo. In fact, he once even said, “I was in all kinds of drama productions in high school and college. It was something I was very familiar with: to take on another personality before you step out on the stage.”
Dave Eshelman Was a Little Extreme in His Behavior
While Dave did treat this entire experiment as a kind of improv exercise, he did end up tapping into some real places that pushed him in one specific direction. According to his own narrative, as the guard deemed responsible for maintaining order among prisoners, he had a lot of power, and he ended up tapping into his own experiences in a brutal fraternity hazing a few months earlier. However, he was also aware of what he was doing – he has since asserted, “I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, ‘How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say ‘Knock it off?'”
After all, Dave was the one who instructed the prisoners to do push-ups repeatedly when they messed up their count, had them say embarrassing sexual innuendos to their peers, threw them in solitary for any reason, verbally threatened physical violence, and even went as far as to instruct them to simulate sodomy as a form of punishment on one shift. The other guards also were undertaking similar actions rather than telling him to stop. It was the latter that many believe was the breaking point of this entire ordeal since it happened on day five, yet Dave didn’t regret his actions because he believed he was accomplishing something good and contributing to the understanding of human behavior.
Dave Eshelman Has Since Moved on to Accomplish Great Things
In the five decades to have passed since the experiment, Dave has actually come to realize he was wrong to ramp up the intimidation on the prisoners without any real sense as to whether he was hurting anybody, but he is glad no one suffered any lasting damage. Nevertheless, he understands the whole situation was a little abnormal, which is why he has even asserted, “Sometimes when people know about the experiment and then meet me, it’s like, My God, this guy’s a psycho! But everyone who knows me would just laugh at that.”
That’s because Dave is truly just a normal man from California who has spent the majority of his life as the owner-operator of a mortgage business called Finet Mortgage in his hometown of Saratoga. He actually earned his license in 1988, following a few years serving as a journalist for The Tri-City Herald in Washington and then a stint in the telecom industry at Honeywell and Fujitsu from 1977 to 1988, only to establish his business in 1993. As for his personal standing, from what we can tell, it appears as if he is based out of Los Gatos, California, at the moment, in a home he lovingly shares with his partner, Lucy McGuire, and their three children. It’s also imperative to note that Dave is still an active performer; though, instead of acting, he is a musician and a member of the British Invasion cover band called Nigel and Clive.
Read More: John Mark: Where is the Stanford Prison Experiment Guard Now?
