영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

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

Behavioral economists have long observed that people tend to feel the pain of losing something more intensely than the pleasure of gaining an equivalent amount, a tendency ①known as loss aversion. This asymmetry, which ②was first documented through a series of carefully designed experiments, suggests that the psychological weight of a loss can be roughly twice that of a comparable gain. Consider an investor who refuses to sell a declining stock, ③clings to the hope that its price will eventually recover, even when all available evidence indicates that selling and reinvesting elsewhere would be more rational. Such behavior, though it ④appears irrational from a purely economic standpoint, becomes understandable once we recognize that the investor is trying to avoid the sharp discomfort associated with realizing a loss. Similarly, consumers often demand a much higher price to give up an item they already own than they would be ⑤willing to pay to acquire the same item in the first place.

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

Economists traditionally measured a community's wealth in terms of factories, income, or infrastructure, yet sociologists increasingly point to a less ①visible resource: social capital, the networks of trust and reciprocity that allow people to cooperate for mutual benefit. Robert Putnam popularized the concept by documenting a ②decline in civic participation, noting that fewer Americans joined bowling leagues, parent associations, or local clubs even as bowling itself remained popular. Communities rich in social capital tend to enjoy ③lower crime and more effective local government, because neighbors who know and trust one another can coordinate informally without relying entirely on formal institutions. However, social capital is not uniformly beneficial; tightly bonded networks can also ④welcome outsiders and reinforce existing inequality. For this reason, researchers increasingly distinguish between bonding capital and bridging capital, which ⑤connects otherwise separate communities.

When anthropologists first began systematically studying societies far removed from their own, many unconsciously judged unfamiliar customs against the standards of their home culture, a tendency now known as ethnocentrism. Cultural relativism emerged as a ①disruptive principle, holding that a society's practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than measured against an outside standard presumed to be universal. Anthropologist Franz Boas argued that no culture possesses an inherently ②superior set of values, and that apparent oddities, once examined closely, typically serve ③coherent functions within their own social systems. Cultural relativism transformed fields ranging from anthropology to international development, encouraging researchers to ④suspend quick judgment and seek local meaning before drawing conclusions. Critics caution, however, that taken to an extreme, the principle risks excusing practices that cause ⑤genuine harm.

When engineers design the software that controls a self-driving car, they inevitably face a question that philosophers have debated for ①decades. If a crash becomes unavoidable, should the vehicle protect its own passenger at all costs, or should it be programmed to ②minimize total harm, even if that means steering toward the person inside? Surveys reveal an uncomfortable ③contradiction: most people say a car should be programmed to save the greater number of lives, yet the same people admit they would never buy a vehicle designed to sacrifice its own owner. This gap between the ideal and the personal choice suggests that ethical programming cannot be settled by public opinion alone. Manufacturers, regulators, and philosophers must instead agree on ④transparent rules before autonomous vehicles are ⑤forbidden to make such decisions on the road.

Labeling theory approaches deviance not as a fixed property of certain acts, but as a social process created when powerful groups attach a negative label to a person's behavior. According to this view, nearly everyone breaks minor rules at some point, yet only some individuals are singled out, caught, and formally branded as delinquents or criminals. Sociologist Howard Becker argued that this label often becomes a master status, a single identity that overshadows every other trait a person has. Once labeled, an individual may find legitimate opportunities closing off, pushing them toward _______________. This process, sometimes called secondary deviance, illustrates how social reaction can produce the outcome it claims merely to describe.

Social unrest does not always emerge from the poorest conditions; it frequently erupts when circumstances are improving but not quickly enough to satisfy rising expectations. This paradox lies at the heart of relative deprivation theory, which holds that discontent arises less from objective hardship than from a perceived gap between what people expect and what they actually receive. Political scientist Ted Gurr illustrated the pattern with what is often called the J-curve: revolutions tend to follow a period of sustained improvement that is then followed by a sudden reversal, leaving citizens feeling suddenly cheated of gains they had come to regard as their due. Because the theory centers on perception rather than raw statistics, it helps explain why _______________.

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. (C) 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. (A) Sociologists distinguish between normative reference groups, which shape a person's values and behavior, and comparative reference groups, which merely provide a benchmark for self-assessment. (B) This counterintuitive finding demonstrates that satisfaction depends less on objective circumstances than on the group against which those circumstances are measured.

No further reminders, willpower, or repeated decisions are required once the initial commitment has been made. The design of behavioral savings programs deliberately minimizes the number of decisions a participant must make over time. ( ① ) At the moment of hiring, an employee is asked only once whether to commit future salary increases to retirement savings. ( ② ) If the employee agrees, that single decision governs all future contribution increases automatically. ( ③ ) This stands in sharp contrast to conventional savings advice, which typically asks individuals to make a fresh decision to save more each time their income changes. ( ④ ) Because each additional decision creates another opportunity for procrastination or reconsideration, minimizing the number of required decisions substantially increases the likelihood that saving actually occurs. ( ⑤ ) The program's success, in this sense, stems less from persuading people to value saving more than from reducing the number of moments at which they could choose not to.