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.

Why do people often overvalue objects they have partly ①built themselves, even when the finished product is objectively inferior to something they could have simply purchased? This puzzle, which researchers ②named after a furniture retailer famous for selling items that require home assembly, challenges the standard economic assumption that value is determined solely by an object's inherent qualities. In a series of experiments, participants who ③assembled a plain storage box were willing to pay nearly as much for their own imperfect creation as they were for a professionally built version, despite being fully aware of its flaws. Labor, it seems, functions as a kind of psychological investment: once effort has been ④pour into a task, individuals become reluctant to judge the outcome objectively, because doing so would require admitting that their effort was partly ⑤wasted.

Classical economic theory assumes that consumers ①evaluate every price change in the same rational way, weighing marginal benefit against marginal cost regardless of the absolute numbers involved. Behavioral economists, however, have discovered a striking exception: the moment a price drops to exactly zero, people's judgment ②shift in a way that ordinary discounting cannot explain. In a well-known laboratory experiment, participants chose between two chocolates, one of higher quality ③priced at a small fee and one of lower quality offered for free. When both prices were merely ④reduced 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 ⑤changed.

Imagine watching a fair coin land on heads five times in a row and ①feeling an increasingly strong intuition that the next flip is somehow due to produce tails. This intuition, though psychologically compelling, rests on a basic misunderstanding of probability, since each flip of a fair coin ②remains entirely independent of every flip that came before it. The coin possesses no memory of its previous outcomes, and its probability of landing on tails on the sixth flip ③stays fixed at fifty percent regardless of how many heads preceded it. Casinos have long profited from this misconception, watching gamblers place larger bets after a losing streak simply because they mistakenly ④believing that a win has become statistically overdue. Economists have even documented the same error among trained professionals, including loan officers ⑤who grow more likely to approve a risky application simply because they recently rejected several applications in a row.

Suppose a mad scientist removed a living brain from its body, placed it in a vat of nutrient fluid, and connected its neurons to a supercomputer capable of generating perfectly ①unrealistic sensations. The brain would experience a full and convincing world, complete with a sky, a body, and other people, without ever suspecting that none of it existed outside the simulation. This scenario, unsettling as it sounds, raises a genuinely difficult question for anyone confident in their own perception: how could a person ever ②prove that they are not that very brain right now? Ordinary evidence cannot help, since any proof gathered through the senses would itself be ③generated by the same simulation being tested. Some philosophers conclude that absolute certainty about the external world is simply ④unattainable, while others argue that the mere possibility of deception, however vivid, is not sufficient reason to ⑤abandon our everyday trust in what we perceive.

Modern consumer culture often assumes that expanding the range of available options will automatically make people ①freer and happier, yet a growing body of research suggests the opposite may sometimes be true. When individuals select from an enormous set of alternatives, satisfaction with the final choice frequently ②increases rather than declines, even when the chosen item is objectively excellent. This decline stems not from the difficulty of deciding but from what happens afterward, once a decision has already been made. Having considered so many possibilities, a person naturally imagines the specific advantages that a different, unchosen option might have offered, and this imagined comparison ③quietly erodes contentment with what was actually selected. By contrast, someone who chose from only two or three alternatives rarely constructs such an ④elaborate fantasy of missed advantages. The paradox, therefore, is that abundance can free people from external constraint while simultaneously ⑤trapping them in a private cycle of comparison and regret.

Imagine two travelers preparing for the same trip: one refuses to fly after watching news coverage of a recent plane crash, while the other books a flight without hesitation. Statistically, air travel remains far safer than driving the same distance by car, yet vivid, emotionally charged images tend to dominate human judgment more powerfully than dry statistics ever could. This tendency, in which people estimate how likely an event is based on _______________, quietly shapes countless everyday decisions. News broadcasts that repeatedly feature rare disasters can leave viewers convinced that such events are common, even though official records clearly show the opposite. Advertisers and politicians alike exploit this pattern, knowing that a single striking anecdote often persuades audiences more effectively than pages of careful statistics ever manage to.

Consider a student who genuinely intends to study for tomorrow's exam yet, when the evening actually arrives, chooses to watch another episode of a favorite show instead, promising herself she will surely study harder next week. This pattern, in which the pull of an immediate pleasure overwhelms the value of a distant benefit, appears again and again across ordinary life, from postponed exercise to delayed savings. People do not necessarily fail to understand that the future reward matters more; rather, _______________. Behavioral economists note that this preference weakens considerably once both options are pushed into the future, which is why planning a diet starting next month feels effortless compared with skipping dessert tonight.

Suppose you meet a quiet, gentle man who speaks softly, tends a small garden, and organizes his bookshelf with meticulous care. (A) This judgment, however, ignores a crucial fact: truck drivers vastly outnumber florists in almost every country, which means that, statistically, he is far more likely to belong to the larger group regardless of how well he fits the flower-shop image. (B) Relying on resemblance to a familiar category rather than on underlying numerical proportions, known among researchers as representativeness, leads people to overlook these base rates almost automatically. Even trained professionals, who should know better, often fall into the same trap when a vivid description feels more convincing than plain statistics. Consequently, teaching people to pause and ask how common something actually is, instead of merely how typical it appears, can meaningfully improve the accuracy of everyday predictions and reduce costly errors in judgment. (C) Asked whether he is more likely a florist or a truck driver, most people instinctively choose florist, since his personality matches the stereotype so neatly.

주어진 문장: A clear example of this mismatch can be found in the way students evaluate their own reading comprehension. Metacognition, broadly defined as the capacity to monitor and evaluate one's own cognitive processes, is often treated as a reliable guide to what we actually know, yet a growing body of evidence suggests that the correspondence between subjective confidence and objective accuracy is far weaker than intuition would suggest. ( ① ) Individuals routinely overestimate how thoroughly they have understood a passage of text immediately after reading it, a phenomenon partly attributable to the fluency with which the material was processed rather than to any genuine grasp of its underlying structure. ( ② ) Because rereading familiar material tends to feel effortless, learners frequently mistake that ease of processing for durable comprehension, a misattribution that can lead them to abandon further study prematurely. ( ③ ) This gap between perceived and actual mastery, sometimes labeled the illusion of knowing, has practical consequences for education, ( ④ ) since students who trust their inflated self-assessments are less likely to seek out the more effortful, retrieval-based strategies that would otherwise consolidate their learning. ( ⑤ )