Subjective and expressive emotional responses in depression

Twenty-four depressed and twenty-three nondepressed male patients rated pleasantness of slides varying in hedonic content. Depressed patients rated positive slides as less pleasant and less arousing but did not differ from nondepressed patients in subjective response to normatively unpleasant images. Analysis of videotapes of facial expressions while watching the slide images showed that depressives exhibited more negative expressions than nondepressives to negative slides. Groups did not differ in facial expression to positive stimuli, but neither group displayed much affect to those stimuli. These data suggest a possible dissociation between self-reported and observable responsivity to emotional stimuli in depression and that diminished subjective emotional response in depression is restricted to hedonically positive stimuli and does not reflect generalized diminished emotional responsivity. These results also imply that clinical assessment of emotional responsivity in depression should be made using modalities in addition to observer evaluation of expressed emotion.