영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Classical economic theory long assumed that decision makers ①gather all relevant information, calculate every possible outcome, and select the single option that maximizes their benefit. Herbert Simon, however, questioned this assumption, ②arguing 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, people typically stop once they find an option that seems good enough to meet their immediate needs, a strategy Simon ③termed 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. This approach is not a failure of reasoning but rather a sensible adaptation to a world where information is costly and time is genuinely limited. Consequently, models assuming unlimited rationality often fail to predict actual behavior, while frameworks ④acknowledge these cognitive boundaries offer a far more realistic account of how ordinary decisions are ⑤made.

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent ①cannot be recovered regardless of what is decided next. In practice, however, people routinely allow such irrecoverable expenditures, known as sunk costs, ②to shape their subsequent decisions, a pattern referred to as the sunk cost fallacy. A moviegoer who finds a film thoroughly disappointing after the first thirty minutes will often remain in the theater until the credits roll, ③reasoning 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 ④have invested heavily in a failing project frequently continues funding it, arguing that abandoning 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, ⑤compounding the very waste the decision-makers hoped to avoid.

Why do people often ①overvalue objects they have partly built themselves, even when the finished product is objectively ②inferior to something they could have simply purchased? This puzzle, which researchers named after a furniture retailer famous for selling items that require home assembly, challenges the standard economic assumption that value is determined solely by an object's inherent qualities. In a series of experiments, participants who assembled a plain storage box were willing to pay nearly as much for their own ③imperfect creation as they were for a professionally built version, despite being fully aware of its flaws. Labor, it seems, functions as a kind of psychological investment: once effort has been poured into a task, individuals become ④reluctant to judge the outcome objectively, because doing so would require admitting that their effort was partly wasted. This tendency helps explain why consumers often prefer products that demand some degree of personal assembly, even when a comparable finished item is available at a ⑤higher price and requires no time investment whatsoever.

When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh not only the expected outcome of each option but also how ①pleasant it would feel to discover later that a different choice had been better. This anticipation of future regret, rather than the size of the potential loss itself, frequently becomes the ②dominant factor shaping the final decision. Investors, for example, sometimes continue holding a declining stock rather than selling it, not because they expect the price to recover, but because selling would force them to confront the possibility of having made a clear mistake. Researchers have found that people feel ③sharper regret over losses that resulted from taking action than over identical losses that resulted from doing nothing, which helps explain why so many individuals default to inaction whenever a decision feels ④uncertain. Ironically, this strategy of avoiding regret can itself produce outcomes that are later regretted even more ⑤deeply than the ones it was originally designed to prevent.

Classical economic theory assumes that consumers evaluate every price change in the same ①rational way, weighing marginal benefit against marginal cost regardless of the absolute numbers involved. Behavioral economists, however, have discovered a ②striking exception: the moment a price drops to exactly zero, people's judgment shifts in a way that ordinary discounting cannot explain. In a well-known laboratory experiment, participants chose between two chocolates, one of higher quality priced at a small fee and one of lower quality offered for free. When both prices were merely reduced by the same amount, most participants still ③avoided the higher-quality option. Yet once the cheaper chocolate's price was lowered to zero, the majority ④abruptly switched their preference, even though the price gap between the two options had not actually changed. Researchers explain this reversal by noting that a free item carries no perceived risk of loss, which makes it feel disproportionately ⑤attractive compared with any option that still requires payment, however small.

Behavioral economists have long observed that people tend to feel the pain of losing something more ①intensely than the pleasure of gaining an equivalent amount, a tendency known as loss aversion. Consider an investor who refuses to sell a declining stock, clinging to the hope that its price will eventually ②recover, even when all available evidence indicates that selling and reinvesting elsewhere would be more rational. Such behavior, though it appears ③rational from a purely economic standpoint, becomes understandable once we recognize that the investor is trying to avoid the sharp discomfort associated with realizing a loss. Similarly, consumers often demand a much ④higher price to give up an item they already own than they would be willing to pay to acquire the same item in the first place. As a result, loss aversion frequently pushes individuals toward decisions that ⑤minimize potential regret over losses rather than toward outcomes that maximize their overall welfare.

When individuals face uncertainty about how to behave, they frequently look to the actions of others for guidance. This reliance on collective behavior can be remarkably ①efficient, since it allows individuals to benefit from the accumulated judgment of a crowd without having to gather and evaluate every relevant fact themselves. However, social proof can also lead entire groups astray when the initial signal that triggers imitation is itself ②unreliable or coincidental. A restaurant that happens to attract a long line early in the evening may continue attracting customers throughout the night simply because passersby interpret the queue as evidence of ③inferior quality. Financial markets exhibit an analogous pattern: investors who observe others buying a particular asset often join the buying themselves, reasoning that so many participants cannot all be mistaken, a dynamic that can ④inflate prices well beyond any reasonable estimate of underlying value. Because conformity can substitute for independent judgment so ⑤seamlessly, individuals rarely notice when their own decisions have become mere imitations rather than genuinely deliberated.

As more schools shift toward digital textbooks and online assignments, a student without reliable internet access at home faces a disadvantage that has little to do with talent or effort. Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure essential to modern life. That assumption is increasingly being reconsidered, particularly as _______________. Closing this divide will require more than simply distributing devices.

The secret lies not in the cotton plant itself but in a borrowed piece of bacterial DNA. A cotton plant that manufactures its own insecticide sounds like science fiction, yet it has been growing in fields around the world for decades. ( ① ) Scientists achieved this by isolating a gene from a soil bacterium that produces a protein toxic to specific insect pests but harmless to humans. ( ② ) That gene is then inserted into the plant's own genome so that every cell manufactures the protective protein. ( ③ ) Other genetically modified crops carry a gene that allows them to survive direct exposure to a particular herbicide, letting farmers spray a field to kill weeds without harming the crop growing among them. ( ④ ) Supporters point to yield increases and reduced pesticide spraying documented across millions of hectares, while critics worry about weeds and insects evolving resistance to these built-in defenses over time, much as bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. ( ⑤ ) Regulatory agencies in most countries now require extensive testing before a genetically modified crop reaches the market, evaluating everything from its nutritional content to its potential effects on nearby ecosystems.

주어진 문장: The first of these, often called System 1, operates beneath conscious awareness, shaping judgments before a person even realizes a decision is being made. Psychologists studying human judgment often describe the mind as operating through two distinct systems rather than a single unified process. ( ① ) System 1 works quickly and automatically, generating impressions and snap judgments without any noticeable sense of effort, much as a driver instinctively brakes when a ball suddenly rolls into the street. ( ② ) System 2, by contrast, is slow, deliberate, and demanding, engaged only when a problem requires careful calculation or conscious reasoning. ( ③ ) Most daily decisions are handled almost entirely by System 1, which allows people to function efficiently without exhausting their limited mental resources. ( ④ ) This efficiency comes at a cost, however, because System 1 relies on simple shortcuts that can produce systematic errors, and System 2 is frequently too lazy or too occupied to double-check them. ( ⑤ )