영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Marketers have long recognized that perceived scarcity, the sense that a product or opportunity ①are available only in limited quantity or for a limited time, can dramatically increase its desirability, even when the item's intrinsic qualities remain entirely unchanged. This phenomenon, known as the scarcity effect, operates on a simple psychological principle: when something appears difficult to obtain, people tend ②to infer that it must be valuable, since truly worthless items rarely generate genuine competition for possession. A retailer who labels a product as "limited edition" or displays a countdown timer beside a discounted offer exploits this inference, ③prompting customers to make hurried purchase decisions they might otherwise postpone or reconsider. Experimental studies confirm that identical products ④are rated as more desirable and often command higher prices when framed as scarce than when the same products are presented as widely and continuously available. The effect intensifies further when scarcity is attributed to high demand rather than to limited supply alone, since competition from other buyers ⑤introduces an additional layer of urgency absent from mere supply constraints.

Working memory refers to the mental workspace in which information is ①temporarily held and manipulated while a person performs a cognitive task. Such tasks include solving an arithmetic problem, following a rapid conversation, or holding a phone number in mind before dialing it. In the mid-twentieth century, the psychologist George Miller proposed that this workspace could accommodate roughly seven discrete items. His claim proved so ②influential that it became widely known as the magic number seven. Subsequent research, however, revealed that Miller's estimate was somewhat ③conservative, since it failed to account for the complexity of the material being remembered. Nelson Cowan later argued that when rehearsal strategies are ④prevented and attention is tightly controlled, genuine capacity hovers closer to four items rather than seven. This discrepancy suggests that what earlier studies had measured was not raw storage capacity itself but a hybrid quantity ⑤inflated by clever strategies. Contemporary psychologists therefore distinguish between the fixed limit of working memory and the flexible techniques that allow individuals to transcend that limit.

Imagine two travelers preparing for the same trip: one ①agrees to fly after watching news coverage of a recent plane crash, while the other books a flight without hesitation. Statistically, air travel remains far ②safer than driving the same distance by car, yet vivid, emotionally charged images tend to ③dominate human judgment more powerfully than dry statistics ever could. This tendency, in which people estimate how likely an event is based on how easily examples come to mind rather than on actual data, quietly shapes countless everyday decisions. News broadcasts that repeatedly feature rare disasters can leave viewers convinced that such events are ④common, even though official records clearly show the opposite. Advertisers and politicians alike ⑤exploit this pattern, knowing that a single striking anecdote often persuades audiences more effectively than pages of careful statistics ever manage to.

Classical economic theory long assumed that decision makers gather all relevant information, calculate every possible outcome, and select the single option that maximizes their benefit. Herbert Simon, however, questioned this assumption, arguing that human beings operate under real constraints of time, knowledge, and mental capacity that make such exhaustive calculation practically impossible. Instead of searching endlessly for the theoretically perfect choice, _______________, a strategy Simon termed satisficing. A shopper comparing refrigerators, for example, rarely examines every model available; she instead sets a few practical criteria, such as price and size, and selects the first appliance that satisfies them adequately.

Socialization is the lifelong process through which individuals absorb the norms, values, and roles that allow them to function within a society. Most of this process unfolds gradually and is barely noticed by the people experiencing it. Resocialization, by contrast, refers to a deliberate and often abrupt process in which an individual is stripped of a previous identity and trained to adopt a new set of norms, typically within what sociologist Erving Goffman called a total institution. These institutions frequently begin the process with what Goffman termed a mortification of self, removing personal possessions and erasing markers of prior status so that _______________. While resocialization can help individuals adapt to demanding new roles, critics note that total institutions can also produce lasting psychological strain.

When consumers compare two products and assume that the one labeled "eco-friendly" is automatically the more sustainable choice, they often overlook the complexity involved in verifying such a claim. (A) Life cycle assessment, commonly abbreviated as LCA, is a systematic method developed to evaluate the environmental impact of a product across every stage of its existence. This method examines raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal, compiling data on energy consumption and emissions generated at each stage. (B) By tracing a product from its origin to its disposal, this approach reveals impacts that might otherwise remain hidden from consumers who see only the finished item on a shelf. For example, an electric vehicle may produce no emissions while being driven, yet the mining of metals for its battery can generate substantial environmental costs elsewhere. (C) Without accounting for these earlier stages, a superficial comparison could mistakenly present the vehicle as entirely emission-free. Therefore, researchers increasingly rely on life cycle assessment to make informed decisions rather than trusting labels alone.

German sociologist Georg Simmel argued that the psychological experience of city life differs fundamentally from life in small towns, primarily because urban residents are bombarded with a much greater volume of stimuli than the human nervous system evolved to process. (B) This detachment, while sometimes criticized as cold or impersonal, also grants urban residents a distinctive freedom, since so few people know or judge them personally. (A) To cope with this constant sensory overload, Simmel proposed, city dwellers develop what he called a blasé attitude, treating most encounters with calculated detachment rather than genuine engagement. (C) Simmel therefore viewed anonymity as a double-edged feature of modern life, one that isolates individuals from deep communal bonds while liberating them from constant surveillance.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter challenged a common assumption when he found that job seekers were more likely to hear about new opportunities from casual acquaintances than from close friends and family. (A) Weak ties, precisely because they connect otherwise separate networks, transmit novel information more efficiently than the redundant, overlapping ties within a tightly bonded group. (C) This finding, published as the strength of weak ties, rests on a structural insight: close friends tend to belong to the same tight social circle and therefore already share most of the same information. (B) Granovetter's insight has since been applied well beyond job searches, informing research on how innovations spread and how epidemics travel through a population.

Individuals rarely evaluate their own lives in isolation; instead, they measure their achievements, possessions, and status against a reference group, a set of people they use as a standard for comparison. (C) Robert Merton showed that soldiers who compared their promotion chances to peers within their own slow-moving unit often felt more satisfied than soldiers in units with faster promotion rates. (A) Sociologists distinguish between normative reference groups, which shape a person's values and behavior, and comparative reference groups, which merely provide a benchmark for self-assessment. (B) This counterintuitive finding demonstrates that satisfaction depends less on objective circumstances than on the group against which those circumstances are measured.

Suppose a traveler journeyed backward in time and, through some combination of accident and intention, prevented their own grandfather from ever meeting their grandmother. Time travel to the past has long fascinated physicists and philosophers alike, but it also generates a famously troubling contradiction. ( ① ) If the grandfather never had children, the traveler themselves would never have been born, which means the traveler could never have existed to make the trip in the first place. ( ② ) Yet if the traveler never made the trip, the grandfather would have survived to meet the grandmother after all, allowing the traveler to be born and eventually travel back in time. ( ③ ) The story therefore loops endlessly, undermining itself at every turn rather than settling into any stable outcome. ( ④ ) Some physicists resolve the paradox by arguing that any consistent timeline must forbid such self-defeating actions from ever succeeding. ( ⑤ ) Others propose that a traveler who alters the past simply branches off into a separate, parallel timeline instead.