영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

When individuals face uncertainty about how to behave, they frequently look to the actions of others for guidance, ①assuming that a behavior adopted by many people is more likely to be correct or appropriate than one adopted by few, a tendency known as social proof. This reliance on collective behavior can be remarkably efficient, since it allows individuals ②to 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 ③trigger imitation is itself unreliable 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 ④interpret the queue as evidence of superior quality. Financial markets exhibit an analogous pattern: investors who observe others buying a particular asset often join the buying themselves, ⑤reasoning that so many participants cannot all be mistaken.

Cognitive psychologists ①distinguish between two modes by which the mind handles information, a distinction that helps explain why experienced drivers can hold conversations while navigating familiar roads without conscious effort. Automatic processing occurs rapidly, ②requires minimal attention, and typically operates outside conscious awareness, allowing multiple automatic tasks to proceed without interfering with one another. Controlled processing, by contrast, unfolds more slowly, demands deliberate attention, and can generally handle only one demanding task at a time, since it draws upon a limited pool of cognitive resources that becomes rapidly depleted under competing demands. Skills that once required intense concentration, such as reading or typing, gradually ③become automatic through extensive practice, freeing attentional resources for other purposes. This shift ④explains why novice drivers find it difficult to talk while merging onto a highway, whereas seasoned drivers manage the same maneuver with comparative ease. However, automaticity ⑤carry hidden costs, since automatized responses can be triggered inappropriately by habitual cues even when circumstances have changed, occasionally producing errors that controlled deliberation would have prevented.

Individuals confronted with a set of options frequently ①default to whichever alternative requires no active decision at all, a tendency scholars term the status quo bias. Rather than weighing the merits of each available choice afresh, decision-makers often treat the current arrangement as a reasonable baseline simply because it already exists, even when ②switching would plainly serve their interests better. This pattern becomes especially apparent in contexts where enrollment in a program ③depend on a default setting. When employees must actively opt into a retirement savings plan, participation rates remain stubbornly low; yet when the same plan is presented as automatic unless an employee opts out, participation rises dramatically, despite the fact that the underlying financial terms ④are identical in both cases. Two forces appear to drive this asymmetry: first, the cognitive effort required to evaluate alternatives, and second, an aversion to the potential regret that ⑤might follow an active decision that turns out poorly.

As solar and wind power expand ①rapidly across national grids, engineers face a challenge that receives far less public attention than the construction of the generating facilities themselves. Unlike conventional power plants, which can adjust their output to match demand at almost any moment, solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity only when sunlight or wind is available, producing supply that fluctuates ②rarely. One proposed solution involves large-scale battery storage systems, which absorb ③surplus electricity generated during periods of high output and release it later when generation declines. Another approach relies on expanding transmission networks across wider regions, so that electricity generated in a sunny area can be redirected to places experiencing a ④shortfall. Without such investment, integrating renewable energy could ⑤paradoxically undermine the very reliability that modern electricity grids are expected to provide.

Conventional economic wisdom holds that more options are always preferable to fewer, since a larger set of alternatives ①increases the likelihood that any individual will find one that precisely matches their preferences. When shoppers are presented with an extensive array of choices, they frequently experience heightened anxiety about making the wrong selection and, paradoxically, become ②less likely to make any purchase or decision at all. Furthermore, individuals who do eventually choose from an overwhelming array often report ③higher satisfaction with their selection than those who chose from a modest handful of options, since the sheer number of unexplored alternatives ④fosters lingering doubt about whether a better choice was overlooked. Businesses that recognize this dynamic have begun deliberately ⑤curating smaller, carefully selected assortments, betting that a narrower range of options can sometimes generate more sales and greater customer satisfaction than abundance.

Social media platforms rarely show users a neutral stream of information. Instead, recommendation algorithms are optimized to maximize engagement, and content that provokes strong emotion tends to hold attention longer than balanced reporting ever could. Some platforms have experimented with reducing the visibility of outrage-driven content, only to see user engagement drop, which reveals _______________.

A cricket contains, gram for gram, roughly as much protein as beef, yet requires a small fraction of the land, water, and feed needed to raise cattle. This efficiency has drawn growing attention from researchers looking for ways to feed a global population that continues to climb while arable land remains essentially fixed. Insects also convert feed into body mass with remarkable efficiency, since they are cold-blooded and therefore spend far less energy regulating body temperature than a cow or pig must. _______________. Food companies have responded by grinding insects into a flour that disappears into protein bars, pasta, and baked goods, letting consumers benefit from the nutrition without ever having to look an insect in the eye.

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.

Anyone who has ever promised to finish a project "by Friday," only to still be working on it weeks later, has experienced the planning fallacy firsthand. (A) One proposed remedy, known as reference class forecasting, requires planners to deliberately consult outcomes from comparable past projects rather than relying solely on their own optimistic intuition. Until such external correction becomes standard practice, ambitious deadlines will likely continue to be broken with remarkable consistency. (B) This term describes the persistent tendency of individuals and organizations to underestimate how long a task will take, how much it will cost, and how many complications will inevitably arise. (C) What makes this bias particularly stubborn is that awareness of past failures rarely leads to more accurate predictions; a construction firm that finished its last three projects late will often insist, with genuine confidence, that this next project will be different. Researchers argue that planners focus almost exclusively on the specific steps of the current task while ignoring the broader statistical record of similar projects that came before.

Change blindness refers to a striking limitation of human perception in which observers fail to notice substantial alterations to a visual scene, provided the change occurs during a brief disruption such as an eye movement or a momentary obstruction. (A) In a now-famous demonstration, researchers showed participants two versions of a photograph in alternation, separated by a short blank screen, and asked them to identify what had changed. Even when an entire building disappeared or a person's clothing shifted color, many viewers stared at the picture without detecting anything unusual. (B) Consequently, change blindness demonstrates that our impression of a rich, complete visual world is, to a surprising extent, an illusion constructed by the mind, not a faithful record of external reality. (C) This phenomenon occurs because visual attention, rather than passively recording every detail like a camera, actively selects only a narrow subset of information for processing at any given moment. Whatever falls outside that narrow spotlight is represented only sparsely, if at all, leaving it vulnerable to being overwritten without notice.