영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Prospect theory proposes that the subjective value of money is not a straight line but a curved function, ①differing sharply from the assumptions of classical economic models. In the domain of gains, the function bends downward as amounts ②increase, so the psychological difference between earning zero and one hundred dollars feels far greater than between earning one thousand and eleven hundred. A parallel pattern appears among losses, where the curve ③bend in the opposite direction, yet sensitivity still fades as the amount grows larger. This tendency, ④known as diminishing sensitivity, explains why a shopper barely notices a ten dollar increase on a two thousand dollar purchase. Researchers illustrate this curvature with graphs ⑤shaped like an S turned sideways, sloping gently near the center and flattening toward both extremes.

When workers receive a five percent raise in a year when prices have ①climbed five percent as well, their real purchasing power has not changed at all, yet many still report feeling noticeably better off. This tendency to judge economic well-being by nominal figures ②printing on a paycheck, rather than by what that money can actually purchase, is known among economists as money illusion. Employers exploit this pattern by ③favoring modest nominal raises over deeper structural adjustments, since a visible increase on a payslip satisfies employees more effectively than an explanation about inflation could. The illusion persists even among people who claim to understand inflation well, which suggests that the bias ④operates at an intuitive level that formal knowledge does not easily override. Some economists ⑤argue that policymakers should exploit this illusion strategically, since workers resist nominal wage cuts far more fiercely than they resist the equivalent erosion of real wages.

Anyone who has ever promised to finish a project "by Friday," only ①to still being working on it weeks later, has experienced the planning fallacy firsthand. This term describes the persistent tendency of individuals and organizations ②to underestimate how long a task will take, how much it will cost, and how many complications will inevitably arise. What makes this bias particularly stubborn is that awareness of past failures rarely leads to more accurate predictions; a construction firm that ③finished its last three projects late will often insist, with genuine confidence, that this next project will be different. Researchers argue that planners focus almost exclusively on the specific steps of the current task while ④ignoring the broader statistical record of similar projects that came before. Until such external correction becomes standard practice, ambitious deadlines will likely continue to be ⑤broken with remarkable consistency.

Imagine two travelers preparing for the same trip: one ①agrees to fly after watching news coverage of a recent plane crash, while the other books a flight without hesitation. Statistically, air travel remains far ②safer than driving the same distance by car, yet vivid, emotionally charged images tend to ③dominate human judgment more powerfully than dry statistics ever could. This tendency, in which people estimate 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 convinced that such events are ④common, even though official records clearly show the opposite. Advertisers and politicians alike ⑤exploit this pattern, knowing that a single striking anecdote often persuades audiences more effectively than pages of careful statistics ever manage to.

A small bakery once sold a basic loaf of bread for three dollars and a premium loaf for six dollars, and most customers, uncertain about the added value of the pricier option, simply bought the ①cheaper one. The owner then introduced a third option: a slightly larger premium loaf priced at seven dollars, one that was clearly ②inferior to the six-dollar loaf in terms of value for money. Almost nobody chose the new seven-dollar loaf, yet sales of the six-dollar loaf ③fell sharply, because it now appeared to be an obvious bargain when placed beside the inferior newcomer. This pattern, confirmed across countless pricing experiments in other markets, demonstrates that people ④rarely judge options in isolation; instead, they evaluate choices relative to whatever alternatives happen to be nearby. Businesses have since learned to design such decoys deliberately, not expecting them to be purchased at all, but hoping they will make a specific target option look far more ⑤attractive by comparison.

When people are asked to judge how risky or beneficial a particular technology is, they rarely conduct anything resembling a careful cost-benefit analysis. Instead, they consult a quick emotional impression, an instinctive sense of whether the technology feels good or feels bad, and let that impression guide their entire judgment. This mental shortcut, known as the affect heuristic, produces a curious pattern that traditional risk theory struggles to explain: _______________. For example, when researchers presented a fictional industrial chemical alongside a brief description emphasizing its convenience, participants rated it not only as more useful but also, illogically, as less dangerous.

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question. If every plank of a wooden ship is replaced one by one over many years, is the vessel that eventually results still the same ship it once was? Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to erase the ship's identity. The puzzle grows far sharper, however, once a second twist is introduced. Suppose a careful collector gathered every discarded plank and reassembled them into a second vessel, built exactly as the original once stood. Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim to being the genuine one, and no obvious way to decide between them. Philosophers return to this old story again and again, not because they care about timber, but because it forces us to ask whether identity depends on continuous material, continuous form, or _______________.

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.

Imagine watching a fair coin land on heads five times in a row and feeling an increasingly strong intuition that the next flip is somehow due to produce tails. (A) This intuition, though psychologically compelling, rests on a basic misunderstanding of probability, since each flip of a fair coin remains entirely independent of every flip that came before it. (B) The coin possesses no memory of its previous outcomes, and its probability of landing on tails on the sixth flip stays fixed at fifty percent regardless of how many heads preceded it. (C) Casinos have long profited from this misconception, watching gamblers place larger bets after a losing streak simply because they mistakenly believe that a win has become statistically overdue.

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 )