Depressed mood and emotional responding

The current study examined emotional responding in a sample of 57 college students who varied in depression symptom scores. Participants viewed pleasant, unpleasant and neutral emotional-eliciting pictures. Response measures included autonomic activity, subjective report of emotion, eyeblink startle reflex, and postauricular reflex. Findings indicated that greater depression symptoms predicted blunted responding with the postauricular reflex and eyeblink startle reflex measures. However, greater depression symptoms were not associated with blunted or heightened responding as indexed by the autonomic reactivity and self-report measures. Taken together, these results suggest that depression may be associated with both appetitive and defensive responding deficits, which has important implications for emotional responding. The findings underscore the importance of using multiple measures when investigating emotional responding associated with depression.