Campbell's law

Campbell’s law is a rule that says when people or institutions are measured by a certain criteria, they will often try to manipulate that criteria to meet their desired outcome. Imagine, for example, you took a spelling test, and you knew that the teacher was going to grade you only on capitalization. You might ignore spelling altogether and just capitalize all your letters. This is what Campbell’s law is all about. It basically means that the way we measure things can affect the way people act, and that sometimes people will change their behavior in order to “game the system.” This can be a problem because it means the measurements we use to evaluate things may not be accurate or trustworthy. For example, if a school’s funding is tied to scores on standardized tests, the school might focus all its attention on teaching to the test instead of teaching more important skills. This might lead to higher test scores in the short term, but it could also mean students aren’t getting a well-rounded education. So, Campbell’s law reminds us that we need to be careful when we measure things and think about how our measurements might be affecting behavior.