영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Prospect theory proposes that the subjective value of money is not a straight line but a curved function, ①differing sharply from the assumptions of classical economic models. In the domain of gains, the function bends downward as amounts ②increase, so the psychological difference between earning zero and one hundred dollars feels far greater than between earning one thousand and eleven hundred. A parallel pattern appears among losses, where the curve ③bend in the opposite direction, yet sensitivity still fades as the amount grows larger. This tendency, ④known as diminishing sensitivity, explains why a shopper barely notices a ten dollar increase on a two thousand dollar purchase. Researchers illustrate this curvature with graphs ⑤shaped like an S turned sideways, sloping gently near the center and flattening toward both extremes.

A cluster of neurons smaller than a pea can now spontaneously organize itself into layered structures that ①mimic, in miniature, the architecture of a developing human brain. Grown from stem cells coaxed to follow the same developmental cues that guide an embryo, these brain organoids have begun firing electrical signals in patterns that ②sharply resemble the activity recorded in an infant's brain. For researchers studying disorders such as autism or schizophrenia, this offers something long unavailable: a living model of human brain development that can be observed and manipulated directly, without ever touching an actual patient. Because organoids lack sensory organs, a body, or any connection to the outside world, most neuroscientists argue that the structures ③cannot generate anything resembling subjective experience, however brain-like their electrical activity may appear. Even so, the pace at which these organoids are growing more ④complex has convinced some ethicists that the field would benefit from establishing clear ⑤boundaries now, before the science outruns the conversation about what it means.

Anyone designing a presentation, a curriculum, or a grocery list should attend to a well-documented pattern in human memory known as the serial position effect. When people are asked to recall items from a list right after studying it, they ①consistently remember the items presented at the beginning and end far better than those buried in the middle. The advantage for early items, called the primacy effect, arises because those items receive ②less rehearsal and are more likely to be transferred into long-term storage before subsequent items compete for attention. The advantage for final items, known as the recency effect, occurs because those items remain ③accessible in short-term memory at the moment of recall. Middle items suffer because they must compete for ④limited rehearsal opportunities while lacking the stability afforded by extended processing. Communicators who ignore this pattern risk burying their most important point where it will predictably be forgotten. A more effective strategy, therefore, places the crucial message at the beginning or end, precisely where memory proves most ⑤reliable.

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.

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.

Blockchain technology was originally promoted as a way to remove the need for trusted middlemen. In theory, this design distributes power away from any single institution and toward the network as a whole. In practice, however, _______________, controlling enough computing power or currency to influence outcomes that were supposed to be decided collectively. Whether decentralization can survive this concentration of power remains one of the technology's most unresolved questions.

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

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.

Their actual forecasting accuracy, however, has repeatedly proven no better than that of far less experienced participants, and sometimes even worse. Overconfidence among financial professionals presents a puzzling contradiction. ( ① ) Fund managers and analysts typically possess years of specialized training, access to vast quantities of market data, and considerable professional experience. ( ② ) One might reasonably expect such expertise to translate into consistently superior predictions about future market movements. ( ③ ) Longitudinal studies tracking professional forecasts against actual outcomes reveal a persistent gap between confidence and accuracy. ( ④ ) This finding does not imply that expertise is worthless, but it does suggest that expertise can inflate confidence more readily than it improves genuine predictive accuracy. ( ⑤ ) Investors would therefore do well to treat confident predictions, however credentialed their source, with a healthy measure of skepticism.

주어진 문장: Such consistency across repeated trials suggests that the pattern is a genuine feature of human cognition, not random noise. In a classic experiment inspired by Keynes's beauty contest analogy, participants choose a number between zero and one hundred, and the winner is whoever selects the number closest to two-thirds of the average of all guesses submitted. ( ① ) A perfectly rational player, assuming every other participant reasons with unlimited depth, would conclude the equilibrium number is zero, since reasoning about others' reasoning collapses the average toward that single point. ( ② ) In practice, however, actual guesses rarely converge on zero; most participants stop reasoning after a round or two of imagining what others might guess, producing average guesses that cluster between twenty and thirty-five. ( ③ ) This gap between theoretical equilibrium and observed behavior reveals that human reasoning is bounded, capable of anticipating a few steps ahead but rarely capable of iterating the process indefinitely. ( ④ ) Economists use this game as a diagnostic tool, since the number a person submits reveals how many levels of strategic thinking that person is willing to perform. ( ⑤ ) This is a measure that idealized rational agents could never provide.