Professor David McAdams explores how information overload changes what we know, with lower-quality ideas receiving less scrutiny before spreading

Every day, people decide which headlines to read, which social media posts to believe, and which recommendations deserve attention. As information becomes faster and cheaper to produce, the challenge is deciding what is worth trusting.

In this episode of Fuqua Insights Podcast, Professor David McAdams of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business discusses his research on how information spreads through social interactions and what happens when the volume of information overwhelms people's limited attention. Drawing on game theory and what he describes as economic epidemiology, McAdams centers the conversation on his recent paper examining how changes in the information environment shape collective knowledge.

The paper's central finding is that increasing the volume of information can reduce the reliability of what people collectively know. McAdams argues that information spreads through "social transmission chains," where people decide whether to remember, share, or ignore what they encounter. As more information floods the system, people have less capacity to process each idea, causing those transmission chains to become shorter. The result is a trade-off in which "people know more, but they're dumber," he said.

McAdams explains that limited attention is the mechanism driving this outcome. Because people cannot fully process an endless stream of information, they rely less on careful social filtering. "When there's an abundance of information, there's a scarcity of attention," he explains. With fewer opportunities for information to be evaluated and passed through multiple people, ideas receive less scrutiny before spreading. He also notes that AI may further change this dynamic by making information easier to produce, access, and summarize, while also reshaping how people interact with information networks.

McAdams emphasizes that organizations should intentionally design how information is shared rather than relying on informal conversations alone. He points to approaches that encourage independent judgment, structured evaluation, and thoughtful dissemination of information before decisions are made. At the same time, he notes that social interactions remain valuable because they help refine and improve ideas over time. As organizations increasingly adopt AI tools and navigate growing information flows, designing effective information environments becomes an increasingly important leadership challenge.

Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season.

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