영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Individuals rarely evaluate their own lives in isolation; instead, they measure their achievements, possessions, and status against a reference group, a set of people they use as a standard for comparison. This group ①need not be one to which a person actually belongs. A struggling artist may judge success not against neighbors but against celebrated painters in art history, a comparison ②that can inspire ambition or, just as easily, breed persistent dissatisfaction. Sociologists distinguish between normative reference groups, which shape a person's values and behavior, and comparative reference groups, ③which merely provide a benchmark for self-assessment. Robert Merton showed that soldiers who compared their promotion chances to peers within their own slow-moving unit often felt more satisfied than soldiers in units with faster promotion rates, because the latter could see colleagues ④advance while they themselves ⑤lagging behind.

People often recognize, in ①calm reflection, that their future selves will be tempted to abandon a goal they currently value. Rather than relying solely on willpower at the critical moment, they may choose to restrict their own future options in advance, a strategy known as precommitment. By making certain choices ②affordable, inconvenient, or impossible to reverse, individuals can protect a long-term goal from a short-term impulse that has not yet arisen. A person hoping to save money might lock funds into an account that ③penalizes early withdrawal, removing the very temptation that would otherwise be difficult to resist. Similarly, someone determined to finish a project might ④publicly announce a deadline, transforming private intentions into a commitment that carries social consequences if broken. What unites these examples is a simple insight: because future desires cannot always be ⑤trusted, the wisest moment to act may be now.

Working memory refers to the mental workspace in which information is ①temporarily held and manipulated while a person performs a cognitive task. Such tasks include solving an arithmetic problem, following a rapid conversation, or holding a phone number in mind before dialing it. In the mid-twentieth century, the psychologist George Miller proposed that this workspace could accommodate roughly seven discrete items. His claim proved so ②influential that it became widely known as the magic number seven. Subsequent research, however, revealed that Miller's estimate was somewhat ③conservative, since it failed to account for the complexity of the material being remembered. Nelson Cowan later argued that when rehearsal strategies are ④prevented and attention is tightly controlled, genuine capacity hovers closer to four items rather than seven. This discrepancy suggests that what earlier studies had measured was not raw storage capacity itself but a hybrid quantity ⑤inflated by clever strategies. Contemporary psychologists therefore distinguish between the fixed limit of working memory and the flexible techniques that allow individuals to transcend that limit.

A hamburger patty need not come from a slaughtered animal if a small sample of muscle cells can be persuaded to multiply inside a steel tank. Cultured meat begins with a biopsy of animal muscle tissue, from which scientists isolate cells capable of dividing repeatedly, then feed those cells a nutrient broth that supplies the sugars, proteins, and minerals an animal's bloodstream would normally provide. Inside a bioreactor, the cells multiply across scaffolding designed to encourage them to align into fibers, gradually thickening into something that begins to resemble muscle tissue. Supporters argue that because the process never requires raising and slaughtering a whole animal, _______________. Skeptics counter that producing the specialized broth at a large enough scale remains prohibitively expensive, meaning cultured meat is unlikely to compete with conventional meat in price until the technology matures considerably further.

It would be comforting to believe that anything sufficiently large or obvious appearing within our field of vision will automatically capture our attention, yet decades of research into inattentional blindness suggest otherwise. When people are absorbed in a demanding task, such as counting how many times a ball is passed between players, they frequently fail to notice an unexpected and conspicuous event unfolding in plain sight, even something as unlikely as a person in a costume walking through the scene. This failure does not stem from a defect in the eyes, which register the stimulus perfectly well, but from the fact that _______________. Policymakers ought to take this finding more seriously than they currently do, because it implies that simply placing a warning sign within someone's visual range offers no guarantee that it will be consciously registered. Designing safer environments, therefore, requires accounting for the limits of attention itself, not merely assuming that visibility alone ensures awareness.

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.

As efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions intensify, industries unable to eliminate carbon dioxide from their processes have turned to a technology known as carbon capture and storage. This technology involves separating carbon dioxide from the exhaust of power plants before it is released into the atmosphere, then transporting the captured gas for underground injection. Once injected into porous rock formations, the gas is trapped beneath layers of impermeable rock that prevent it from escaping into the air. Proponents argue that carbon capture and storage _______________. For instance, cement and steel production, both of which release carbon dioxide as an unavoidable byproduct of chemical reactions, are considered prime candidates for this approach. However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively expensive and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. Despite such concerns, many governments continue funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an indispensable role in reaching emission targets.

Generative AI systems learn to write, draw, and compose by studying enormous collections of existing human work. Supporters argue that this resembles how a human student learns by studying the masters. Critics respond that the comparison breaks down at scale: _______________. Courts around the world are now being asked to decide whether training an algorithm on copyrighted material counts as fair use or as infringement.

Retailers have discovered practical ways to counteract the negative effects of choice overload without simply reducing the number of products they offer. (A) One common strategy involves organizing an extensive product catalog into clearly labeled categories and subcategories, allowing customers to narrow their search gradually rather than confronting the entire array at once. (B) Another approach highlights a small number of curated recommendations, such as "staff picks" or "best sellers," giving hesitant customers a reasonable starting point without eliminating other options entirely. (C) Both strategies share a common principle: they do not reduce the objective number of choices available but instead reduce the cognitive burden of navigating them.

Because no alternative is ever removed, defenders insist that the intervention remains fully compatible with individual liberty. One of the most frequently cited nudge programs involves the redesign of cafeteria layouts to encourage healthier eating among students. ( ① ) Rather than banning unhealthy snacks outright, administrators simply relocate them to less convenient shelves while placing fruit and vegetables within easy reach. ( ② ) Students remain completely free to seek out the relocated items if they wish to do so. ( ③ ) Data collected across numerous schools show that this modest rearrangement increases the selection of healthier options by a meaningful margin, without any accompanying complaints about restricted choice. ( ④ ) Skeptics nonetheless point out that the very effectiveness of such nudges depends on exploiting the same mental shortcuts, such as convenience and visibility, that lead people to make less healthy choices in the first place. ( ⑤ ) Whether this exploitation is ethically troubling or simply a pragmatic use of known psychological tendencies remains a matter of ongoing disagreement.