영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Why do people often overvalue objects they have partly ①built themselves, even when the finished product is objectively inferior to something they could have simply purchased? This puzzle, which researchers ②named 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 ③assembled a plain storage box were willing to pay nearly as much for their own imperfect 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 ④pour into a task, individuals become reluctant to judge the outcome objectively, because doing so would require admitting that their effort was partly ⑤wasted.

Over the past two decades, insights drawn from behavioral economics have moved beyond academic journals and into the machinery of government itself, ①reshaping how numerous public programs are designed and implemented. Tax authorities in several countries, for example, discovered that simply informing citizens how many of their neighbors had already paid overdue taxes on time substantially ②increased subsequent compliance rates, outperforming letters that merely threatened legal penalties for continued nonpayment. Public health agencies have applied similar principles to encourage preventive care, finding that appointment reminders phrased to emphasize the personal cost of a missed visit ③proved more effective than neutral reminders listing only the date and time. Employment offices redesigned job-seeking assistance programs around specific, actionable steps rather than general encouragement, discovering that participants who were asked ④to write down a concrete plan for the following week were considerably more likely to follow through than those who received only general advice. What unites these disparate interventions ⑤are a shared recognition that small, carefully tested adjustments to how choices are presented can produce measurable improvements in outcomes.

Marketers have long recognized that perceived scarcity, the sense that a product or opportunity ①are available only in limited quantity or for a limited time, can dramatically increase its desirability, even when the item's intrinsic qualities remain entirely unchanged. This phenomenon, known as the scarcity effect, operates on a simple psychological principle: when something appears difficult to obtain, people tend ②to infer that it must be valuable, since truly worthless items rarely generate genuine competition for possession. A retailer who labels a product as "limited edition" or displays a countdown timer beside a discounted offer exploits this inference, ③prompting customers to make hurried purchase decisions they might otherwise postpone or reconsider. Experimental studies confirm that identical products ④are rated as more desirable and often command higher prices when framed as scarce than when the same products are presented as widely and continuously available. The effect intensifies further when scarcity is attributed to high demand rather than to limited supply alone, since competition from other buyers ⑤introduces an additional layer of urgency absent from mere supply constraints.

When engineers design the software that controls a self-driving car, they inevitably face a question that philosophers have debated for ①decades. If a crash becomes unavoidable, should the vehicle protect its own passenger at all costs, or should it be programmed to ②minimize total harm, even if that means steering toward the person inside? Surveys reveal an uncomfortable ③contradiction: most people say a car should be programmed to save the greater number of lives, yet the same people admit they would never buy a vehicle designed to sacrifice its own owner. This gap between the ideal and the personal choice suggests that ethical programming cannot be settled by public opinion alone. Manufacturers, regulators, and philosophers must instead agree on ④transparent rules before autonomous vehicles are ⑤forbidden to make such decisions on the road.

Among the many tools available to those who design choice environments, few are as quietly ①powerful as the default option, the alternative that takes effect automatically unless a person actively selects something else. Because changing a default requires ②deliberate effort, many individuals simply accept whatever arrangement has been preselected for them, regardless of whether that arrangement actually serves their interests best. Countries that automatically enroll citizens in organ donation programs, requiring an explicit request to opt out, consistently report far ③lower donor registration rates than countries that require citizens to actively opt in. Employers who automatically enroll new hires in retirement savings plans likewise see participation rates climb dramatically compared with employers who leave enrollment entirely voluntary. What makes default options so influential is not merely convenience; a default also functions as an implicit signal about what is considered ④normal or recommended, subtly shaping perceptions even among individuals who believe themselves to be deciding ⑤independently.

The discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology gave scientists a tool ①precise enough to correct a single mistaken letter in the human genome, raising hope for curing inherited diseases that have resisted treatment for generations. Yet the same precision that makes CRISPR so promising also makes it ②dangerous in the wrong hands. Editing a gene in a sperm, egg, or early embryo does not simply change one patient; it alters the genetic code passed down to every future generation, a decision no single person should be allowed to make ③alone. Scientific organizations around the world have therefore drawn a careful line, ⑤permitting gene editing to treat disease in existing patients while ④permitting any edit that would be inherited by their descendants. Critics worry, however, that as the technology becomes cheaper and more widely available, this line will become harder to enforce than it is to draw.

Medieval philosophers told the story of a hungry donkey placed exactly midway between two identical, equally fragrant piles of hay, with no factor whatsoever tipping the balance toward either option. Because the donkey is assumed to be a perfectly rational creature that always chooses the option supported by the strongest reason, and because neither pile offers any advantage over the other, the donkey supposedly finds itself with no rational basis for choosing one pile rather than the other. Paralyzed by this perfect symmetry, the donkey starves to death precisely because it can find no reason to move in either direction. Critics of the story point out that _______________.

Financial markets occasionally experience episodes in which asset prices rise far beyond any level that careful analysis of underlying fundamentals could justify, a phenomenon commonly attributed to herd psychology. During such episodes, individual investors often conclude that continuing to buy is reasonable simply because so many others are doing the same, rather than because any independent evaluation supports the purchase. Understanding market bubbles thus requires looking beyond conventional economic fundamentals toward the ___________ that binds individual investors into a single, momentum-driven crowd.

Sensors buried in the soil now report moisture levels in real time, and automated systems adjust irrigation without a farmer ever walking the rows. (A) Smaller family farms, however, often cannot afford the upfront cost of this equipment, and some worry that the gap between high-tech and traditional operations will only widen. (B) For large operations with the capital to invest, these tools have measurably increased yields while reducing water waste. (C) There is also a quieter cultural cost: generations of farming knowledge risk being replaced by dashboards and automated alerts that few young farmers are taught to question.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks that used to require human hands. (A) However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, giving workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed much faster. (B) Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one had predicted. (C) A factory worker displaced this year, therefore, cannot simply wait for a new industry to emerge decades from now.