영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

A striking proportion of individual investors believe their own stock-picking ability to be above average, a statistical impossibility given that only half of any population can genuinely outperform the rest, yet a pattern that ①persists with remarkable consistency across surveys. This tendency, known as overconfidence bias, leads investors ②to trade more frequently than a more cautious assessment of their own skill would justify. Extensive research comparing the trading records of numerous individual accounts has demonstrated that investors who trade most frequently ③tends to earn substantially lower returns than those who trade rarely, largely because transaction costs accumulate and because frequent trading often reflects overconfident reactions to short-term noise rather than genuine insight. Overconfidence also manifests in the tendency to underestimate the range of possible outcomes, ④causing investors to concentrate their holdings in a small number of assets they feel certain about rather than diversifying across a broader portfolio. Paradoxically, then, the very confidence that motivates investors to act decisively often ⑤undermines the outcomes they are trying to achieve.

In the late nineteenth century, the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus undertook a rigorous investigation of forgetting ①by serve as his own experimental subject. He memorized thousands of meaningless three-letter syllables ②so that prior knowledge could not skew his results. After learning each list to perfection, he tested his retention at intervals ③ranging from twenty minutes to a month later. He recorded how many repetitions were required to relearn the material each time. The resulting curve revealed a consistent pattern. Forgetting proceeds rapidly during the initial hours following learning, then gradually ④decelerates until the rate of loss becomes almost imperceptible. Roughly half of the acquired information vanished within the first hour alone. Yet whatever survived that initial plunge tended to persist for much longer periods. Ebbinghaus further found that ⑤distributing study sessions across several days produced better retention than cramming the same repetition into one sitting.

When people estimate the value of an unfamiliar product, they rarely rely on objective calculation alone; instead, they anchor their judgment to whatever numerical reference ①happens to be presented first, however arbitrary that number may be. This phenomenon, ②known as the anchoring effect, exerts a disproportionate influence on price perception precisely because initial figures function as a kind of cognitive gravity that subsequent estimates struggle to escape. A shopper who ③first sees a jacket listed at $300 before it is marked down to $150 will likely judge the discounted price as an excellent bargain. Retailers, well aware of this bias, frequently display an inflated "original price" beside a discounted one, not because the higher figure is meaningful, but because it ④recalibrate customers' expectations. Even professionals are not immune: negotiators who open with an extreme initial offer often secure more favorable final terms than those ⑤who begin with a moderate one.

Classical economic models typically assume that people discount future rewards at a constant rate, ①valuing a reward received later somewhat less than an identical reward received now. Empirical observation, however, reveals a different pattern: people apply a much steeper discount to the immediate future than to the distant future, a phenomenon ②termed hyperbolic discounting. This inconsistency explains why an individual might sincerely resolve tonight to wake up early and exercise tomorrow, only to postpone the plan once tomorrow actually arrives and the immediate discomfort of getting out of bed ③become vivid and present. When the reward or cost in question lies safely in the future, its emotional weight remains muted, ④allowing rational long-term goals to dominate one's stated intentions. Once that same reward or cost draws near, however, its immediacy triggers a disproportionately strong emotional pull, frequently ⑤overriding the very plans made earlier with such apparent confidence.

Millions of people now wear devices that continuously track their heart rate, sleep patterns, and daily activity, ①generating an intimate stream of health data that would have been unthinkable to collect just two decades ago. Users generally assume this information belongs to them, since it ②is drawn directly from their own bodies. In practice, however, the terms of service that few people read often ③grants the manufacturer broad rights to store, analyze, and even sell anonymized versions of that data to insurers or advertisers. This arrangement becomes especially troubling when health data influences decisions far beyond fitness, such as insurance premiums or employment screening. Advocates for reform argue that biological data deserves a category of protection ④stronger than ordinary consumer information, precisely because it can never truly ⑤be replaced or reset once it has been exposed.

Individuals confronted with a set of options frequently default to whichever alternative requires no active decision at all. Decision-makers often treat the current arrangement as a reasonable ①baseline simply because it already exists, even when switching would plainly serve their interests better. When employees must actively opt into a retirement savings plan, participation rates remain stubbornly ②low; yet when the same plan is presented as automatic unless an employee opts out, participation rises ③dramatically, despite the fact that the underlying financial terms are identical in both cases. Two forces appear to drive this asymmetry: first, the cognitive effort required to evaluate alternatives and initiate change, and second, an aversion to the potential regret that might follow an active decision that turns out poorly. Because inaction carries no such vivid regret, the status quo comes to feel ④riskier than it objectively is, illustrating how mere inertia can ⑤masquerade as a deliberate preference.

When people evaluate their personal contribution to water scarcity, they often consider only the water that flows directly from household taps, overlooking a far larger quantity consumed indirectly through the goods they purchase. The water footprint, a concept that extends this narrow view, _______________. Central to this concept is the notion of virtual water, the water embedded invisibly within a product, from irrigating cotton fields to livestock raised for meat. For instance, producing a kilogram of beef can require several thousand liters of water, whereas a kilogram of vegetables typically demands a fraction of that amount. Nations that import water-intensive goods rather than producing them domestically are importing virtual water from regions that may face severe shortages. Critics caution, however, that focusing exclusively on aggregate volume can mislead policymakers, since a liter of water drawn from a region suffering drought carries far greater consequences than one drawn from a water-abundant area.

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.

Imagine a teleportation device that scans every atom in your body, transmits that information to a distant station, and reconstructs an exact physical duplicate there, while destroying the original body in the process. (A) Philosophers, however, are troubled by a version of the same device that malfunctions: instead of destroying the original, it leaves the original body intact while still creating a perfect duplicate elsewhere. (B) Now two people exist, each with identical memories and an equally strong claim to being the original traveler, and there is no principled way to decide which one is the real continuation of the person who entered the machine. (C) From the traveler's point of view, stepping into the machine and stepping out on the other side would feel utterly seamless, complete with continuous memories and a sense of having simply walked through a door.

Durkheim called this state of normlessness anomie, arguing that rapid social change can strip away the moral guidelines that regulate human desire, leaving individuals disoriented even when material conditions improve. When sociologist Émile Durkheim studied suicide rates across different societies, he noticed something puzzling: rates rose not only during economic depression but also during sudden prosperity. ( ① ) He concluded that both crises share a common feature, the collapse of shared norms that once told individuals what to expect and how to behave. ( ② ) Decades later, Robert Merton extended the concept to explain deviance within stable societies. ( ③ ) He proposed that anomie also arises when a culture insists that everyone pursue identical goals, such as wealth, while denying many people the legitimate means to achieve them. ( ④ ) Faced with this gap between aspiration and opportunity, some individuals conform, but others turn to innovation, ritual, retreat, or rebellion. ( ⑤ ) Anomie theory therefore suggests that crime is less a product of individual failure than of structural imbalance within society itself.