Biography

Mr. Anantha is completing his Ph.D. in Psychology at the Human Factors & Applied Cognition Lab, Indian Institute of Technology Indore. His work sits at the confluence of media psychology, social cognition, and human–computer interaction, where he investigates how contemporary digital environments shape emotional processing and social behavior. A central thread of his research examines the psychological antecedents and consequences of online aggression, including trolling, cyberbullying, and online sexual harassment. His doctoral research focuses on violent video game exposure and its impact on emotional information processing. Specifically, he investigates whether sustained engagement with violent games disrupts emotion recognition abilities and whether such disruptions reflect broader hostile cognitive and affective alterations.

Moving beyond conventional screens, Mr. Anantha also explores the emotional and cognitive effects of VR gaming, with particular attention to cognitive workload, cybersickness, and flow experiences across gaming genres. He adopts a multimethod approach, integrating electrophysiological and behavioral data, including eye-tracking metrics, HRV, EEG, field studies, and psychometric measures, to examine underlying psychological phenomena. A key strength of his work lies in the application of advanced statistical techniques, such as Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), General Linear Models (GLM), and Factor Analysis. He has published in internationally reputed peer-reviewed journals, including Scientific Reports, Psychology of Popular Media, and Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, and has presented his work at several international academic forums, such as IEA 2024 (South Korea), ACED 2023 (IIM Mumbai), and MBCC 2025 (IIT Mandi). In his leisure time, Mr. Anantha enjoys playing cricket, virtually and on the field. He is also an avid video gamer with a keen interest in first- and third-person open-world adventure genres.