Subjects were given a transmission or reception set before or after viewing a videotape of an event which involved an extreme outcome. The results indicated that transmitters made relatively extreme attributions to plausible causal agents when the set was given prior but not subsequent to viewing the event. The results also showed that subjects who had been given a transmission set before viewing the videotape exhibited relatively high recognition of aspects of the event they observed. It is suggested that the data provide support for an encoding interpretation of transmission-reception differences in the attribution of causality.Zajonc (1960) defined cognitive tuning in terms of an individual's principal role in the communication process (i.e., whether a person's task was to transmit or to receive information). Tuning sets are thought to affect the flexibility of an individual's cognitive structure, which in turn may affect impressions formed about others. Individuals set to transmit information are hypothesized to have a relatively fixed and polarized cognitive structure which results in the exclusion of contradictory information. Receivers, on the other hand, should tend to have a more open and flexible cognitive structure, resulting in more openness to contradictory information.Consistent with Zajonc's (1960) formulation, Cohen (1961 found that individuals expecting to transmit an impression were more prone to suppress contradictory information and exhibited more polarized impressions than did expectant receivers. Leventhal (1962) reported that expectant transmitters developed more simplified and unified impressions than did expectant receivers. Brock and Fromkin (1968) found that expectant transmitters chose to listen more to information supportive of their initial impressions of another person than did expectant receivers. Mazis (1973) extended the tuning formulation beyond person perception and found that expectant transmitters