영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

When a country physician named Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids ①who had caught cowpox seemed immune to smallpox, he set in motion a medical revolution without fully understanding why it worked. For nearly two centuries afterward, vaccine development proceeded largely by trial and error, ②weakened or killing a pathogen and testing whether the resulting preparation could train the immune system without causing disease itself. This method produced genuine successes, eventually eliminating smallpox worldwide and reducing diseases such as polio and measles, but each new vaccine still ③required years of laboratory work with no guarantee of success. Advances in molecular biology eventually allowed researchers ④to isolate a single protein from a pathogen's surface rather than using the whole organism, producing vaccines with fewer side effects and a more predictable safety profile. The most recent shift, toward delivering genetic instructions rather than proteins themselves, represents the latest chapter in a story ⑤that began with an eighteenth-century doctor's curiosity about a puzzling immunity among dairy workers.

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent cannot be ①recovered regardless of what is decided next. In practice, however, people routinely allow such irrecoverable expenditures, known as sunk costs, to shape their subsequent decisions, a pattern referred to as the sunk cost fallacy. A moviegoer who finds a film thoroughly ②disappointing after the first thirty minutes will often remain in the theater until the credits roll, reasoning that leaving early would somehow waste the money already spent on the ticket. Organizations exhibit the same fallacy on a larger scale: a company that has invested heavily in a failing project frequently ③abandons funding it, arguing that stopping the project now would render the prior investment meaningless. Yet continuing to invest in a venture destined to fail merely adds new losses to old ones, ④compounding the very waste the decision-makers hoped to avoid. Economists therefore urge decision-makers to evaluate each choice based solely on its prospective outcomes, treating past expenditures as ⑤irrelevant to the decision at hand.

Over the past two decades, insights drawn from behavioral economics have moved beyond academic journals and into the machinery of government itself, reshaping how numerous public programs are designed and implemented. Tax authorities in several countries, for example, discovered that simply informing citizens how many of their neighbors had already paid overdue taxes on time substantially ①increased subsequent compliance rates, outperforming letters that merely threatened legal penalties for continued nonpayment. Public health agencies have applied similar principles to encourage preventive care, finding that appointment reminders phrased to emphasize the personal cost of a missed visit proved more ②ineffective than neutral reminders listing only the date and time. Employment offices redesigned job-seeking assistance programs around specific, actionable steps rather than general encouragement, discovering that participants who were asked to write down a concrete plan for the following week were considerably more likely to follow through than those who received only ③general advice. What unites these disparate interventions is a shared recognition that small, carefully tested adjustments to how choices are presented can produce measurable improvements in outcomes, often at a fraction of the cost required by traditional programs involving substantial financial incentives or extensive ④enforcement. This accumulated evidence has encouraged many governments to establish dedicated units tasked with applying behavioral insights ⑤systematically to policy problems across an increasingly broad range of domains.

As nudging has moved from academic theory into ①declining practice, a persistent ethical question has accompanied its rise: at what point does subtly guiding behavior for someone's own benefit shade into manipulation that undermines their capacity for autonomous choice? Proponents typically distinguish nudges from manipulation by pointing to transparency and reversibility, arguing that a legitimate nudge operates openly, can be easily ②resisted by anyone who wishes to opt out, and ultimately serves the interests of the person being nudged rather than the interests of whoever designed the intervention. Critics counter that this distinction often ③collapses in practice, since many effective nudges work precisely because they exploit cognitive processes operating below conscious awareness. A supermarket that arranges healthier foods at eye level, for instance, differs only in the direction of its influence, not in its underlying mechanism, from a supermarket that arranges the most profitable items at eye level, raising the uncomfortable possibility that any choice architecture inevitably shapes behavior regardless of whose interests it ultimately ④serves. This tension suggests that the ethical status of a nudge cannot be evaluated by examining its psychological mechanism alone; instead, it must be judged according to the ⑤intentions of the party who designs it.

People often recognize, in calm reflection, that their future selves will be tempted to abandon a goal they currently value. Rather than relying solely on willpower at the critical moment, they may choose to _______________, a strategy known as precommitment. By making certain choices costly, inconvenient, or impossible to reverse, individuals can protect a long-term goal from a short-term impulse that has not yet arisen. Similarly, someone determined to finish a project might publicly announce a deadline, transforming private intentions into a commitment that carries social consequences if broken. What unites these examples is a simple insight: because future desires cannot always be trusted, the wisest moment to act may be now.

Conventional economic wisdom holds that more options are always preferable to fewer. Empirical research on consumer behavior, however, complicates this assumption considerably. When shoppers are presented with an extensive array of choices, they frequently experience heightened anxiety about making the wrong selection and, paradoxically, become less likely to make any purchase or decision at all. Businesses that recognize this dynamic have begun deliberately curating smaller, carefully selected assortments, betting that ___________ can sometimes generate more sales and greater customer satisfaction than abundance.

The discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology gave scientists a tool precise enough to correct a single mistaken letter in the human genome, raising hope for curing inherited diseases. (A) Scientific organizations around the world have therefore drawn a careful line, permitting gene editing to treat disease in existing patients while banning any edit that would be inherited by their descendants. (B) Yet editing a gene in a sperm, egg, or early embryo does not simply change one patient; it alters the genetic code passed down to every future generation. (C) Critics worry, however, that as the technology becomes cheaper and more widely available, this line will become harder to enforce than it is to draw.

Every time a smartphone connects to a cell tower or a Wi-Fi network, it quietly records a data point that can later be pieced together into a detailed map of where its owner has been. (A) Companies often argue that anonymized data cannot be traced back to individuals, yet researchers have repeatedly shown that a handful of location points is enough to identify a specific person. (B) Most users agree to this tracking without reading the fine print, assuming that a single company's database poses little threat. (C) The real danger, however, emerges when location data from multiple sources is combined, revealing a person's home, workplace, and daily route.

The same mechanism that helps citizens save more for retirement, in other words, can just as easily be turned against their financial interests. Default settings are not inherently virtuous; their ethical value depends entirely on whose interests they serve. ( ① ) A retirement plan that automatically enrolls employees at a reasonable contribution rate generally benefits those employees by overcoming their tendency toward inertia. ( ② ) A subscription service that automatically renews at a higher price unless the customer actively cancels, however, exploits that very same inertia for the company's benefit rather than the customer's. ( ③ ) Both arrangements rely on the identical psychological tendency to accept whatever has been preselected. ( ④ ) Distinguishing between beneficial and exploitative uses of default settings therefore requires examining not the mechanism itself but the intentions and incentives of whoever designed it. ( ⑤ ) Regulators increasingly demand transparency about default settings precisely because the mechanism alone cannot reveal whether it serves the consumer or merely the company offering it.

Ironically, the more confident these investors become, the less likely they are to seek out disconfirming evidence at all. Confirmation bias exerts a particularly strong influence in financial markets, where uncertainty leaves considerable room for interpretation. ( ① ) An investor convinced that a certain stock is undervalued will often read every piece of ambiguous news as further proof of that belief. ( ② ) Positive earnings are taken as confirmation of the stock's hidden potential, while disappointing earnings are dismissed as a temporary anomaly rather than a genuine warning sign. ( ③ ) This selective interpretation allows the investor's initial conviction to grow stronger with each new piece of information, regardless of whether that information actually supports the belief. ( ④ ) Financial advisors therefore recommend that investors deliberately seek out opinions that challenge their existing positions before making major decisions. ( ⑤ ) Only by actively exposing oneself to disconfirming evidence can one guard against the self-reinforcing cycle that confirmation bias tends to produce.