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We compared the fit of our data with four different theoretical expectations regarding the direction of effect across time between job satisfaction and vigor. Respondents were 573 apparently healthy employees who had completed questionnaires while undergoing a periodical health examination at two points in time, T1 and T2, about 22 months apart. We found that the model that predicted that job satisfaction influenced vigor in a unidirectional way best fitted the data. Our findings provided support for theories postulating that job satisfaction, representing an overall appraisal of job conditions, has a unidirectional impact on positive affects at work.

The medicalization thesis derives from a classic theme in the field of medical sociology. It addresses the broader issue of the power of medicine – as a culture and as a profession – to define and regulate social behavior. This issue was introduced into sociology 50 years ago by Talcott Parsons (1951) who suggested that medicine was a social institution that regulated the kind of deviance for which the individual was not held morally responsible and for which a medical diagnosis could be found. The agent of social control was the medical profession, an institutionalized structure in society that had been given the mandate to restore the health of the sick so that they could resume their expected role obligations. Inherent in this view of medicine was the functionalist perspective on the workings of society: the basic function of medicine was to maintain the established division of labor, a state that guaranteed the optimum working of society. For 20 years, the Parsonian interpretation of how medicine worked – including sick-role theory and the theory of the profession of medicine – dominated the bourgeoning field of medical sociology.