영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

When engineers design the software ①that controls a self-driving car, they inevitably face a question that philosophers have debated for decades. If a crash becomes unavoidable, should the vehicle protect its own passenger at all costs, or should it be programmed ②minimizing total harm, even if that means steering toward the person inside? Surveys reveal an uncomfortable contradiction: most people say a car should be programmed to save the greater number of lives, yet the same people admit ③they 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 ④be settled by public opinion alone. Manufacturers, regulators, and philosophers must instead agree on transparent rules before autonomous vehicles ⑤are allowed to make such decisions on the road.

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.

Policymakers seeking to improve public welfare without restricting individual freedom have increasingly embraced an approach ①known as nudging, which alters the environment in which choices are made rather than mandating particular outcomes. A nudge preserves every option that ②was previously available; it simply arranges those options so that the choice deemed most beneficial becomes easier or more visible than the alternatives. Placing fruit at eye level in a school cafeteria while keeping dessert accessible but less prominent, for instance, ③do not forbid any student from choosing dessert, yet it measurably shifts consumption patterns toward healthier food. Advocates argue that such interventions ④respect autonomy precisely because no option is removed and no penalty is imposed for choosing differently. Critics, however, contend that even subtle architectural choices exploit predictable cognitive shortcuts, ⑤raising questions about whether influencing behavior through psychological means is meaningfully different from more coercive forms of persuasion.

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.

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.

When individuals face uncertainty about how to behave, they frequently look to the actions of others for guidance, assuming that a behavior adopted by many people is more likely to be correct or appropriate than one adopted by few, a tendency known as social proof. Because conformity can substitute for independent judgment so seamlessly, individuals rarely notice when their own decisions have become ___________ rather than genuinely deliberated.

The influence of the status quo bias extends well beyond personal finance into the design of public policy itself. (A) Consequently, policymakers who wish to encourage socially beneficial behavior, such as organ donation or energy conservation, have increasingly turned to adjusting default settings rather than relying solely on persuasion or financial incentives. (B) Countries that changed their organ donation systems from opt-in to opt-out, for example, observed dramatic increases in the proportion of citizens registered as donors, without any change in the underlying laws governing consent. (C) This outcome demonstrates that the default option itself functions as an implicit recommendation, one that citizens are reluctant to override even when doing so would take only a moment.

The anchoring effect is not limited to shopping decisions; it also plays a subtle but powerful role in legal and financial judgments. (A) Similarly, jurors who are told that a plaintiff is seeking an unusually large sum in damages tend to award higher compensation than jurors who hear no specific figure at all, even when the evidence presented is identical. (B) This pattern suggests that anchors can distort judgments requiring careful, case-by-case reasoning, not merely quick, intuitive estimates of price. (C) For instance, experienced judges asked to set a sentence after being exposed to an arbitrary number, such as one generated by rolling dice, have been shown in experimental settings to hand down harsher sentences when the number was high.

주어진 문장: This experiment shows that consumers do not simply weigh money saved against money spent, but react to the very presence or absence of a price tag itself. Classical economic theory assumes that consumers evaluate every price change in the same rational way, weighing marginal benefit against marginal cost regardless of the absolute numbers involved. ( ① ) Behavioral economists, however, have discovered a striking exception: the moment a price drops to exactly zero, people's judgment shifts in a way that ordinary discounting cannot explain. ( ② ) 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. ( ③ ) When both prices were merely reduced by the same amount, most participants still preferred the higher-quality option. Yet once the cheaper chocolate's price was lowered to zero, the majority abruptly switched their preference, even though the price gap between the two options had not actually changed. ( ④ ) Researchers explain this reversal by noting that a free item carries no perceived risk of loss, which makes it feel disproportionately attractive compared with any option that still requires payment, however small. ( ⑤ )

In purely material terms, of course, rejecting the offer leaves the responder objectively worse off than accepting it would have. In a typical round of the ultimatum game, a proposer offers to keep eighty percent of a sum of money, leaving only twenty percent for the responder. ( ① ) A responder who values only material gain should accept this offer without hesitation, since twenty percent of something is still more than one hundred percent of nothing. ( ② ) In practice, however, a substantial proportion of responders reject such lopsided offers outright. ( ③ ) Both participants then receive nothing, an outcome that a purely self-interested calculator would never choose voluntarily. ( ④ ) Researchers interpret this pattern as evidence that people are willing to incur a personal cost in order to punish behavior they perceive as exploitative. ( ⑤ ) This willingness to sacrifice material gain for the sake of fairness appears consistently across many different cultures, though the specific threshold for what counts as an unfair offer can vary considerably.