People's thoughts and beliefs about themselves and their career options affect their ability to make decisions. Career counselors would benefit from knowing the factors that contribute to negative career thoughts. This study examined two unexplored factors that may affect the development and maintenance of negative career thoughts, decision-making styles and a ruminative thought pattern. Pearson product correlations and a multiple regression were used to determine the extent to which maximizing and rumination predicted negative career thoughts. Results suggested that maximizing and rumination are moderately correlated with negative career thoughts. Together they account for 14% of the explained variance of negative career thoughts. Implications of findings on practice and research are discussed. The cognitive information processing theory is also presented as a method by which to conceptualize a client's maximizing decision-making style and ruminating thought patterns. (Contains 3 tables.)