영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Conventional economic wisdom holds that more options are always preferable to fewer, since a larger set of alternatives increases the likelihood that any individual will find one that precisely ①matches their preferences. 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, ②become less likely to make any purchase or decision at all. This phenomenon, commonly ③called choice overload, arises because evaluating numerous alternatives demands considerable cognitive effort, and the fear of forgoing a superior but unexamined option can overwhelm the pleasure of selecting from a limited set. Furthermore, individuals who do eventually choose from an overwhelming array often ④reports lower satisfaction with their selection than those who chose from a modest handful of options. Businesses that recognize this dynamic have begun deliberately ⑤curating smaller, carefully selected assortments.

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.

For much of the twentieth century, memory researchers assumed that once a memory ①had been consolidated—transformed from a fragile, short-term trace into a stable, long-term representation—it remained essentially fixed, immune to further modification unless the underlying neural circuitry was physically damaged. This assumption, however, was overturned by a body of research demonstrating that the act of retrieval itself ②can destabilizing a previously consolidated memory, ③rendering it temporarily susceptible to alteration before it is, in a sense, filed away again. During this narrow window, ④which typically lasts only a few hours, the memory can be strengthened, weakened, or even subtly distorted by new information encountered in the interim, after which it must undergo a second round of stabilization, a process now widely referred to as reconsolidation. Consequently, what we experience as a stable recollection may actually be a continuously revised construction, reshaped every time it ⑤is summoned into conscious awareness and returned to storage.

Before a large-scale construction project such as a highway or dam receives government approval, planners in many countries are required to conduct an environmental impact assessment, a formal process ①designed to predict and evaluate the ecological consequences of a proposed development. This process begins with a baseline survey, in which specialists ②document existing conditions, including wildlife, water quality, and air composition, so that future changes can be measured against a reference point. Analysts then model how the project might alter these conditions, ③drawn on data from comparable developments. For instance, a proposed highway that would bisect a forest might be evaluated for its potential to fragment habitats, ④disrupting migration routes on which certain species depend. If the assessment identifies unacceptable risks, planners may be required to redesign the project or adopt mitigation measures such as wildlife corridors. Critics contend, however, that assessments are sometimes treated as a bureaucratic formality rather than a genuine constraint, since developers who ⑤commission the studies retain strong influence over how the findings are interpreted.

Classical economic models typically assume that people discount future rewards at a constant rate, valuing a reward received later somewhat less than an identical reward received now, but doing so ①consistently across all time horizons. Empirical observation, however, reveals a different pattern: people apply a much ②steeper discount to the immediate future than to the distant future. When the reward or cost in question lies safely in the future, its emotional weight remains ③vivid, allowing rational long-term goals to dominate one's stated intentions. Once that same reward or cost draws near, however, its immediacy triggers a disproportionately strong emotional pull, frequently ④overriding the very plans made earlier with such apparent confidence. This dynamic helps explain chronic procrastination, since tasks that carry long-term benefits are perpetually ⑤deferred in favor of activities offering more immediate satisfaction.

Identical information can provoke strikingly different reactions depending on how it is worded, a phenomenon economists call the framing effect. Patients told that a surgical procedure carries a ninety percent survival rate tend to consent to it far more readily than patients told that the same procedure carries a ten percent mortality rate, even though the two descriptions convey exactly the same statistical reality. Recognizing how deeply framing shapes judgment is therefore essential, not because the underlying facts change, but because the very same facts, dressed in different language, can lead reasonable people toward ___________ conclusions.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu introduced the concept of habitus to describe the deeply ingrained dispositions, tastes, and ways of perceiving the world that individuals absorb through years of socialization within a particular social class. (B) Bourdieu argued that habitus allows privilege to reproduce itself across generations without any explicit coercion, since children raised in advantaged households absorb the tastes that elite schools implicitly reward. (A) Habitus operates below conscious awareness, so that a person's habitus feels entirely natural even though it was produced by specific social conditions. (C) Because habitus feels like personal identity rather than social conditioning, individuals rarely recognize how thoroughly their preferences have been shaped by class position.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter challenged a common assumption when he found that job seekers were more likely to hear about new opportunities from casual acquaintances than from close friends and family. (A) Weak ties, precisely because they connect otherwise separate networks, transmit novel information more efficiently than the redundant, overlapping ties within a tightly bonded group. (C) This finding, published as the strength of weak ties, rests on a structural insight: close friends tend to belong to the same tight social circle and therefore already share most of the same information. (B) Granovetter's insight has since been applied well beyond job searches, informing research on how innovations spread and how epidemics travel through a population.

주어진 문장: This apparent immunity to forgetting seemed to set flashbulb memories apart from every other category of recollection. When people recall precisely where they were and what they were doing at the moment they learned of some momentous public event, the resulting memory often feels extraordinarily vivid, as though it had been etched into the mind with photographic precision; researchers have termed such recollections flashbulb memories. ( ① ) Proponents of this concept once argued that the emotional intensity and surprise accompanying such events trigger a distinct neural mechanism that preserves details with unusual fidelity, effectively exempting them from the gradual decay that afflicts ordinary memories. ( ② ) Subsequent longitudinal studies, however, have complicated this picture considerably: when researchers compared accounts gathered within days of an event to accounts gathered years later, they discovered that details had frequently been altered, omitted, or even fabricated, ( ③ ) even though the individuals reporting them expressed unwavering confidence in their accuracy. ( ④ ) This persistent mismatch between subjective certainty and objective consistency implies that flashbulb memories, far from being flawless recordings, are reconstructed narratives shaped by rehearsal, media exposure, and the passage of time. ( ⑤ )

This admission, however, is precisely what the sunk cost fallacy makes so difficult to accept. Consider a construction firm that has spent several years and a substantial budget building a bridge, only to discover partway through that a cheaper and safer alternative route has since become available. ( ① ) A purely forward-looking analysis would compare the remaining cost of finishing the original bridge against the total cost of switching to the new route, ignoring whatever has already been spent. ( ② ) If the new route is genuinely cheaper going forward, the rational choice is to abandon the original project regardless of how much money it has already consumed. ( ③ ) Abandoning the project, however, requires the firm's leadership to publicly acknowledge that a significant portion of the original investment produced no lasting value. ( ④ ) As a result, firms often continue projects long after the numbers clearly favor stopping, simply to avoid confronting this uncomfortable truth. ( ⑤ ) The bridge, in such cases, becomes less a matter of engineering than a monument to the difficulty of admitting a costly mistake.