Do depressed people have less ability to enjoy positive events than happier people?

According to a recent paper published by University of South Florida psychologists (headed by doctoral student Lauren Blysma), depressed individuals actually experience greater reductions in negative mood during positive events than happier people.

Decades of research has indicated that depressed people experience less positive and more negative emotions. It also shows that depressed people report events as less pleasant and more stressful.

Although these findings seem to conflict at first glance, according to  Blysma and colleagues, they do not.

To illustrate this, imagine one depressed person and one happy person. The depressed person reports, say, 3 positive events a day, and the happy person, say, 6. The happier person also reports being happier during these events. However, the depressed person will show a greater reduction in negative mood when each positive experience occurs.

The authors suggest that this could be because depressed people are less able to "hold" their positive emotions relative to happy people. In other words, it could be that not only do they feel less positive mood to similar situations as happier people, but further, that even when they do experience positive events in good ways (reduced negative affect, in this study) they do not reap these benefits for as long.