영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Picture a woman who ①receive a plain ceramic mug as a free gift at a conference and, later that afternoon, refuses to sell it for anything less than triple its price in the gift shop downstairs. Before she ②owned the mug, she would never have paid extra for it; once it became hers, however, its value in her mind rose sharply, simply because she now possessed it. Researchers have repeatedly observed this pattern across many everyday objects, from coffee mugs and concert tickets to office chairs and old furniture ③inherited from relatives. Owners consistently demand more money ④to give something up than buyers are willing to offer for that very same item, revealing a curious asymmetry rooted purely in possession itself. Some economists argue that this effect explains why negotiations over inherited property so often collapse, since each side quietly ⑤attaches a different value to what it currently holds.

Labeling theory approaches deviance not as a fixed property of certain acts, but as a social process ①created when powerful groups attach a negative label to a person's behavior. According to this view, nearly everyone breaks minor rules at some point, yet only some individuals ②are singled out, caught, and formally branded as delinquents, criminals, or troublemakers. Sociologist Howard Becker argued that this label often becomes what he called a master status, a single identity that ③overshadow every other trait a person has and shapes how others treat them from that point onward. Once labeled, an individual may find legitimate opportunities ④closing off, pushing them toward the very community of offenders that the label predicted they would join. Critics of harsh punitive policies frequently invoke labeling theory to argue that stigmatizing young offenders may ⑤entrench criminal identities rather than correct behavior.

Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally opposed, or whether the relationship between them ①changes shape as an economy matures. The Environmental Kuznets Curve, a hypothesis ②borrowed from earlier theories of income inequality, proposes that pollution initially rises alongside economic growth before eventually declining once a society crosses a certain threshold of wealth. In its early stages, industrializing nations prioritize output over conservation, ③treats clean air and water as expendable costs of development to be addressed later. Beyond a certain point, however, rising incomes generate both the technological capacity and the political will ④to demand stricter regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. Some scholars regard this trajectory as a reassuring paradox, suggesting that the very growth ⑤blamed for ecological harm may eventually finance its own repair. Critics, by contrast, argue that the curve rests on a narrow selection of pollutants that happen to decline with wealth, while ignoring greenhouse gases and resource depletion, which show no comparable tendency to fall.

Economists traditionally measured a community's wealth in terms of factories, income, or infrastructure, yet sociologists increasingly point to a less visible resource: social capital, the networks of trust and reciprocity ①that allow people to cooperate for mutual benefit. Robert Putnam popularized the concept by ②documenting a decline in civic participation, noting that fewer Americans joined bowling leagues, parent associations, or local clubs even as bowling itself remained popular, a trend he ③captured in the phrase bowling alone. Communities rich in social capital tend to enjoy lower crime and more effective local government, because neighbors ④who know and trust one another can coordinate informally without relying entirely on formal institutions. However, social capital is not uniformly beneficial; tightly bonded networks can also exclude outsiders and ⑤reinforcing existing inequality.

A cricket contains, gram for gram, roughly as much protein as beef, yet requires a ①substantial 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 ②remarkable efficiency, since they are cold-blooded and therefore spend far less energy regulating body temperature than a cow or pig must. Despite these advantages, insect protein has struggled to gain ③acceptance in many cultures, where the idea of eating insects triggers a reflexive disgust that no nutritional argument alone seems able to overcome. Food companies have responded by grinding insects into a flour that disappears into protein bars, pasta, and baked goods, letting consumers ④benefit from the nutrition without ever having to look an insect ⑤in the eye.

When sociologist Émile Durkheim studied suicide rates across different societies, he noticed something puzzling: rates rose not only during economic depression but also during sudden prosperity. (B) Decades later, Robert Merton extended the concept to explain deviance within stable societies, proposing that anomie also arises when a culture insists that everyone pursue identical goals while denying many people the legitimate means to achieve them. (A) He concluded that both crises share a common feature, the collapse of shared norms, a state Durkheim called anomie, arguing that rapid social change can strip away the moral guidelines that regulate human desire. (C) Faced with this gap between aspiration and opportunity, some individuals conform, but others turn to innovation, ritual, retreat, or rebellion.

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. (A) 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. (B) 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 termed satisficing. (C) 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 acknowledging these cognitive boundaries offer a far more realistic account of how ordinary decisions are actually made.

Retailers have discovered practical ways to counteract the negative effects of choice overload without simply reducing the number of products they offer. (A) One common strategy involves organizing an extensive product catalog into clearly labeled categories and subcategories, allowing customers to narrow their search gradually rather than confronting the entire array at once. (B) Another approach highlights a small number of curated recommendations, such as "staff picks" or "best sellers," giving hesitant customers a reasonable starting point without eliminating other options entirely. (C) Both strategies share a common principle: they do not reduce the objective number of choices available but instead reduce the cognitive burden of navigating them.

주어진 문장: Correcting this bias, therefore, requires more than good intentions or personal willpower. 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. ( ① ) 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. ( ② ) 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. ( ③ ) 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. ( ④ ) 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. ( ⑤ ) Until such external correction becomes standard practice, ambitious deadlines will likely continue to be broken with remarkable consistency.

A struggling artist may judge success not against neighbors but against celebrated painters in art history, a comparison that can inspire ambition or, just as easily, breed persistent dissatisfaction. 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. ( ① ) This group need not be one to which a person actually belongs. ( ② ) 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. ( ③ ) 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. ( ④ ) This counterintuitive finding demonstrates that satisfaction depends less on objective circumstances than on the group against which those circumstances are measured. ( ⑤ )