© The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission:

Kazdin and Blase (2011) argue that a major shift and expansion of intervention research and clinical practice is needed to decrease the prevalence and incidence of mental illness. The goal of decreasing rates of mental illness and improving psycho-social functioning on a large scale (i.e., in society) begins with challenging basic assumptions as to which components underlie psychological intervention. We ask what school of thought could also be used to ameliorate psychological health problems. Much of our evidence has come from studies of automaticity using priming techniques, which refer to the passive, subtle, and unob-trusive activation of relevant mental representations by external environmental stimuli, including exposure to semantic concepts, short messages, visual images, and physical sensations (Bargh & Chartrand, 2000). To integrate the notions of automaticity and clinical intervention, we discuss basic assumptions underlying priming-based intervention as compared with traditional inter-ventions and demonstrate uses of priming-based procedures to activate and facilitate psychological change