영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Conventional economic wisdom holds that more options are always preferable to fewer, since a larger set of alternatives increases the likelihood that any individual will find one that precisely ①matches their preferences. 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, ②become less likely to make any purchase or decision at all. This phenomenon, commonly ③called choice overload, arises because evaluating numerous alternatives demands considerable cognitive effort, and the fear of forgoing a superior but unexamined option can overwhelm the pleasure of selecting from a limited set. Furthermore, individuals who do eventually choose from an overwhelming array often ④reports lower satisfaction with their selection than those who chose from a modest handful of options. Businesses that recognize this dynamic have begun deliberately ⑤curating smaller, carefully selected assortments.

For much of its history, economic theory treated emotion as a distortion ①to be eliminated from otherwise rational calculation, an obstacle standing between decision-makers and their true self-interest. More recent research, however, suggests that emotion ②function not merely as noise but as an integral component of sound judgment, one that supplies information conventional reasoning alone cannot readily access. Individuals who, due to specific neurological conditions, lose the capacity to experience emotion while retaining otherwise normal cognitive abilities frequently ③struggle to make even simple decisions, spending excessive time weighing options that most people resolve almost instantly through a felt sense of what seems right. This observation suggests that emotional responses often ④function as rapid heuristics, allowing individuals to bypass exhaustive deliberation by relying on accumulated affective associations built from past experience. Financial regulators have begun incorporating this understanding into policy design, recognizing that decisions made under conditions of acute emotional arousal often ⑤depart substantially from the measured judgment that individuals would exhibit under calmer circumstances.

Over the past two decades, insights drawn from behavioral economics have moved beyond academic journals and into the machinery of government itself, reshaping how numerous public programs are designed and implemented. Tax authorities in several countries, for example, discovered that simply informing citizens how many of their neighbors had already paid overdue taxes on time substantially ①increased subsequent compliance rates, outperforming letters that merely threatened legal penalties for continued nonpayment. Public health agencies have applied similar principles to encourage preventive care, finding that appointment reminders phrased to emphasize the personal cost of a missed visit proved more ②ineffective than neutral reminders listing only the date and time. Employment offices redesigned job-seeking assistance programs around specific, actionable steps rather than general encouragement, discovering that participants who were asked to write down a concrete plan for the following week were considerably more likely to follow through than those who received only ③general advice. What unites these disparate interventions is a shared recognition that small, carefully tested adjustments to how choices are presented can produce measurable improvements in outcomes, often at a fraction of the cost required by traditional programs involving substantial financial incentives or extensive ④enforcement. This accumulated evidence has encouraged many governments to establish dedicated units tasked with applying behavioral insights ⑤systematically to policy problems across an increasingly broad range of domains.

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 known as loss aversion. Consider an investor who refuses to sell a declining stock, clinging to the hope that its price will eventually recover, even when all available evidence indicates that selling and reinvesting elsewhere would be more rational. As a result, loss aversion frequently pushes individuals toward ___________ rather than toward the outcome that would maximize their overall welfare.

John Rawls proposed an unusual thought experiment to determine what principles of justice a society ought to adopt. (A) Imagine a group of rational people gathered to design the basic rules of their future society, but placed behind what he called a veil of ignorance, unaware of their own race, gender, wealth, or social position. (B) Since no one can predict whether they will be born into privilege or poverty, each person has a strong incentive to choose rules that protect the worst-off members of society. (C) Rawls argued that rational people placed in this position would favor arrangements that guarantee basic liberties for everyone and permit unequal outcomes only when they benefit the least advantaged.

When people recall precisely where they were and what they were doing at the moment they learned of some momentous public event, the resulting memory often feels extraordinarily vivid, as though it had been etched into the mind with photographic precision; researchers have termed such recollections flashbulb memories. (A) Proponents of this concept once argued that the emotional intensity and surprise accompanying such events trigger a distinct neural mechanism that preserves details with unusual fidelity, effectively exempting them from the gradual decay that afflicts ordinary memories. (B) This persistent mismatch between subjective certainty and objective consistency implies that flashbulb memories, far from being flawless recordings, are reconstructed narratives shaped by rehearsal, media exposure, and the passage of time. (C) Subsequent longitudinal studies, however, have complicated this picture considerably: when researchers compared accounts gathered within days of an event to accounts gathered years later, they discovered that details had frequently been altered, omitted, or even fabricated, even though the individuals reporting them expressed unwavering confidence in their accuracy.

Working memory refers to the mental workspace in which information is temporarily held and manipulated while a person performs a cognitive task. Such tasks include solving an arithmetic problem, following a rapid conversation, or holding a phone number in mind before dialing it. (A) Subsequent research, however, revealed that Miller's estimate was somewhat generous, since it failed to account for the complexity of the material being remembered. Nelson Cowan later argued that when rehearsal strategies are prevented and attention is tightly controlled, genuine capacity hovers closer to four items rather than seven. (B) This discrepancy suggests that what earlier studies had measured was not raw storage capacity itself but a hybrid quantity inflated by clever strategies. Contemporary psychologists therefore distinguish between the fixed limit of working memory and the flexible techniques that allow individuals to transcend that limit. (C) In the mid-twentieth century, the psychologist George Miller proposed that this workspace could accommodate roughly seven discrete items. His claim proved so influential that it became widely known as the magic number seven.

Prospect theory proposes that the subjective value of money is not a straight line but a curved function, differing sharply from the assumptions of classical economic models. (A) Understanding this curvature allows economists to predict decisions that a simple, linear model of value could never anticipate. (B) This tendency, known as diminishing sensitivity, explains why a shopper barely notices a ten dollar increase on a two thousand dollar purchase, though the same ten dollars would matter enormously as the price of a meal. (C) In the domain of gains, the function bends downward as amounts increase, and a parallel pattern appears among losses, where the curve bends in the opposite direction, yet sensitivity still fades as the amount grows larger.

The scarcity effect operates with particular force when a deadline, rather than a fixed quantity, defines the limitation. (A) A countdown timer displayed beside an online offer, for instance, creates a constant visual reminder that the opportunity to purchase is steadily disappearing, prompting many shoppers to decide before they have fully considered the purchase. (B) Because the clock continues ticking regardless of the shopper's readiness, the pressure to act quickly can override the more deliberate evaluation that a purchase might otherwise receive. (C) Retailers have accordingly found that adding an explicit deadline, even an artificial one that resets shortly afterward, reliably increases the speed and frequency of purchase decisions.

At that distant point in time, the future increase feels almost costless, since no immediate sacrifice is required. One practical application of hyperbolic discounting involves a savings program that gradually raises an employee's contribution rate over several years. ( ① ) Employees are first asked to commit, well in advance, to increasing their savings rate at a specific future date, often timed to coincide with an expected salary raise. ( ② ) Because the commitment applies only to a point far in the future, the vast majority of employees readily agree to the plan. ( ③ ) When the scheduled date finally arrives, the increase takes effect automatically unless the employee actively opts out, and remarkably few do. ( ④ ) The program succeeds precisely because it separates the decision from the discomfort, asking employees to commit when the cost feels abstract rather than immediate. ( ⑤ ) In this way, a well-timed program can help individuals overcome the very bias that would otherwise prevent them from saving adequately for the future.