영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Picture a woman who receives a plain ceramic mug as a free gift at a conference and, later that afternoon, ①refuses 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 ②declined sharply, simply because she now possessed it. Researchers have ③repeatedly observed this pattern across many everyday objects, from coffee mugs and concert tickets to office chairs and old furniture inherited from relatives. Owners ④consistently demand more money to 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 ⑤collapse, since each side quietly attaches a different value to what it currently holds.

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. 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, whereas casual acquaintances typically move in different circles and can act as bridges to information a person would otherwise never encounter. Weak ties, precisely because they connect otherwise separate networks, _______________. Granovetter's insight has since been applied well beyond job searches, informing research on how innovations spread and how epidemics travel through a population.

Blockchain technology was originally promoted as a way to remove the need for trusted middlemen. In theory, this design distributes power away from any single institution and toward the network as a whole. In practice, however, _______________, controlling enough computing power or currency to influence outcomes that were supposed to be decided collectively. Whether decentralization can survive this concentration of power remains one of the technology's most unresolved questions.

German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished between two fundamentally different forms of social organization, which he termed Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Gemeinschaft, often translated as community, describes relationships bound by close kinship, shared tradition, and face-to-face familiarity, typical of small villages where individuals know one another across an entire lifetime. Gesellschaft, often translated as society, describes relationships organized around impersonal contracts, self-interest, and formal law, typical of large cities where interactions occur between relative strangers who cooperate for specific, limited purposes. Tönnies did not regard one form as simply superior to the other; rather, he saw the shift from Gemeinschaft toward Gesellschaft as a defining feature of modernization, one that _______________.

When an oil tanker ruptures and crude spreads across open water, cleanup crews increasingly reach not only for skimmers and floating booms but also for something far smaller: bacteria that eat oil. (A) Scientists have learned to accelerate the process by adding nutrients that help native microbial populations multiply faster, or by introducing engineered strains, and because the method relies on living organisms rather than heavy machinery, it also tends to leave a far gentler footprint on the surrounding ecosystem than excavation or chemical treatment ever could. (B) Certain naturally occurring microbes possess enzymes capable of breaking hydrocarbon molecules apart, using the carbon as an energy source and gradually converting a toxic slick into carbon dioxide and harmless byproducts. (C) Bioremediation, as this approach is called, works far more slowly than mechanical cleanup, often taking months rather than days, but it can reach contamination trapped in soil or sediment that skimmers and booms can never reach.

A single fertilized egg eventually gives rise to every cell type in the human body, from neurons to bone, a feat that has fascinated biologists for more than a century. (A) Because harvesting these cells traditionally required destroying a human embryo, the research provoked ethical objections fierce enough to slow funding and legislation in several countries for years. (B) A breakthrough arrived when scientists discovered that ordinary adult skin cells could be reprogrammed into a state resembling embryonic versatility without ever touching an embryo, opening a path for stem cell research that far more scientists and funding agencies are now willing to support. (C) Embryonic stem cells retain much of that original versatility, capable in principle of developing into almost any tissue, which is why researchers have long viewed them as a promising raw material for repairing damaged organs.

Where structural functionalism emphasizes cooperation and stability, conflict theory begins from the premise that society is best understood as an ongoing struggle between groups with competing interests over scarce resources such as wealth, power, and prestige. (C) Later sociologists broadened the framework well beyond economic class, applying conflict analysis to struggles organized around race, gender, and other categories of unequal social power. (A) Rooted in the writings of Karl Marx, classical conflict theory focused on the economic struggle between those who own productive resources and those who must sell their labor to survive. (B) Unlike functionalists, who often interpret existing social arrangements as serving a necessary purpose, conflict theorists argue that apparent social order frequently masks underlying tension that dominant groups actively work to contain.

When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh not only the expected outcome of each option but also how painful it would feel to discover later that a different choice had been better. (A) Researchers have found that people feel sharper regret over losses that resulted from taking action than over identical losses that resulted from doing nothing. (B) Investors, for example, sometimes continue holding a declining stock rather than selling it, because selling would force them to confront the possibility of having made a clear mistake. (C) This helps explain why so many individuals default to inaction whenever a decision feels uncertain, even when remaining passive is not actually the safer choice.

Because the donkey is assumed to be a perfectly rational creature that always chooses the option supported by the strongest reason, it finds itself, in this case, with no rational basis for choosing either pile. 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. ( ① ) Neither pile offers any advantage over the other. ( ② ) Paralyzed by this perfect symmetry, the donkey starves to death precisely because it can find no reason to move in either direction. ( ③ ) Critics of the story point out that real animals, and real humans, rarely face situations of such flawless symmetry. ( ④ ) Even a tiny, arbitrary preference, they note, is usually enough to break the tie in practice. ( ⑤ ) The paradox nevertheless raises a serious question about whether purely rational deliberation can ever generate action on its own.

Ironically, the more confident these investors become, the less likely they are to seek out disconfirming evidence at all. Confirmation bias exerts a particularly strong influence in financial markets, where uncertainty leaves considerable room for interpretation. ( ① ) An investor convinced that a certain stock is undervalued will often read every piece of ambiguous news as further proof of that belief. ( ② ) Positive earnings are taken as confirmation of the stock's hidden potential, while disappointing earnings are dismissed as a temporary anomaly rather than a genuine warning sign. ( ③ ) This selective interpretation allows the investor's initial conviction to grow stronger with each new piece of information, regardless of whether that information actually supports the belief. ( ④ ) Financial advisors therefore recommend that investors deliberately seek out opinions that challenge their existing positions before making major decisions. ( ⑤ ) Only by actively exposing oneself to disconfirming evidence can one guard against the self-reinforcing cycle that confirmation bias tends to produce.