The purpose of this study is to integrate categorical and dimensional approaches to emotion and examine both the effects of emotional type and of the emotional dimensions of valence and arousal on memory for television messages. Subjects, 105 freshmen and sophomore communication students at a Western university participating in the experiment for extra credit, were exposed to four news stories containing counterbalanced presentations of emotion (disgust, anger, fear, none) and story subject in a mixed 4x4 design. Dependent variables were subjective evaluation of arousal and valence, and free recall of the news stories. Results indicate that different emotion types differ significantly on ratings of arousal and valence and on memory for stories. Results also indicate a significant main effect for story subject on valence and story subject on memory. The finding that an interaction between story topic and emotion type on the memory data suggests that both arousal of the story topic and arousal of the emotion type combine to determine how well a story is remembered. (Contains 28 references, and three tables and two figures of data.) (Author/RS)