A self-attention approach to the effect of the group on the individualis applied to the phenomenon of participation in religious groups. Previous work indicates that group members become more self-attentive, and thus more concerned with matching to standards of appropriate behavior, as the relative size of their subgroup decreases. This suggests that, in the context of religious groups, members of a congregation will be more self-attentive, and thus more likely to participate in the religious group, when there are fewer congregation members relative to the number of ministers. The results of analysis of ten archival records of participation in religious groups support this perspective. The importance of self-attention processes in religious group settings is discussed.Attending a service in the Gothic cathedral, we have the sensation of being enclosed and steeped in an integral universe, and of losing a prickly sense of self in the community of worshippers.(Yi-Fu Tuan, 1 9 8 2 , '~. 127)Recent work in self-attention theory has examined the effect of the group on the individual (Carver