영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks ①that used to require human hands. Economists have long debated whether this shift destroys jobs or simply ②transforms them. Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one ③had predicted. However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, ④given workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed at a pace that leaves little room for adjustment. For this reason, many economists argue that the real challenge is not the robots themselves, but the speed at which society ⑤is expected to adapt to them.

Social media platforms rarely show users a neutral stream of information. Instead, recommendation algorithms ①are optimized to maximize engagement, and content that provokes strong emotion, particularly outrage, tends to hold attention longer than balanced reporting ever could. Over time, users ②exposed to a steady diet of emotionally charged content may come to believe that extreme opinions are far more common than they actually are, simply because those opinions ③dominate their feed. Researchers describe this as a distorted mirror: the platform reflects not society as it truly is, but a version ④shaping by whatever keeps people scrolling. Some platforms have experimented with reducing the visibility of outrage-driven content, only ⑤to see user engagement drop.

Imagine two travelers ①preparing 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 ②driving 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 ③estimate how likely an event is based on how easily examples come to mind rather than on actual data, quietly shapes countless everyday decisions. News broadcasts that repeatedly feature rare disasters can leave viewers ④convinced 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 ⑤persuade audiences more effectively than pages of careful statistics ever manage to.

Behavioral economists have long observed that people tend to feel the pain of losing something more intensely than the pleasure of gaining an equivalent amount, a tendency known as loss aversion. Consider an investor who refuses to sell a declining stock, clinging to the hope that its price will eventually recover, even when all available evidence indicates that selling and reinvesting elsewhere would be more rational. As a result, loss aversion frequently pushes individuals toward ___________ rather than toward the outcome that would maximize their overall welfare.

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. A perfectly rational player, assuming every other participant reasons with unlimited depth, would conclude the equilibrium number is zero. 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 _______________. This gap between theoretical equilibrium and observed behavior reveals that human reasoning is bounded.

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.

Picture a woman who receives 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 owned 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. Owners consistently demand more money to give something up than buyers are willing to offer for that very same item, _______________. Some economists argue that this effect explains why negotiations over inherited property so often collapse, since each side quietly attaches a different value to what it currently holds.

When anthropologists first began systematically studying societies far removed from their own, many unconsciously judged unfamiliar customs against the standards of their home culture, a tendency now known as ethnocentrism. (A) Anthropologist Franz Boas argued that no culture possesses an inherently superior set of values, and that apparent oddities, once examined closely, typically serve coherent functions within their own social systems. (C) Cultural relativism emerged as a corrective principle, holding that a society's practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than measured against an outside standard presumed to be universal. (B) Critics caution, however, that taken to an extreme, the principle risks excusing practices that cause genuine harm.

When consumers compare two products and assume that the one labeled "eco-friendly" is automatically the more sustainable choice, they often overlook the complexity involved in verifying such a claim. (A) Life cycle assessment, commonly abbreviated as LCA, is a systematic method developed to evaluate the environmental impact of a product across every stage of its existence. This method examines raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal, compiling data on energy consumption and emissions generated at each stage. (B) By tracing a product from its origin to its disposal, this approach reveals impacts that might otherwise remain hidden from consumers who see only the finished item on a shelf. For example, an electric vehicle may produce no emissions while being driven, yet the mining of metals for its battery can generate substantial environmental costs elsewhere. (C) Without accounting for these earlier stages, a superficial comparison could mistakenly present the vehicle as entirely emission-free. Therefore, researchers increasingly rely on life cycle assessment to make informed decisions rather than trusting labels alone.

When workers receive a five percent raise in a year when prices have climbed five percent as well, their real purchasing power has not changed at all, yet many still report feeling noticeably better off. (A) Employers exploit this pattern by favoring modest nominal raises over deeper structural adjustments, since a visible increase on a payslip satisfies employees more effectively than an explanation about inflation could. (B) The illusion persists even among people who claim to understand inflation well, which suggests that the bias operates at an intuitive level that formal knowledge does not easily override. (C) This tendency to judge economic well-being by nominal figures printed on a paycheck, rather than by what that money can actually purchase, is known among economists as money illusion.