영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

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.

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent cannot be ①recovered regardless of what is decided next. In practice, however, people routinely allow such irrecoverable expenditures, known as sunk costs, to shape their subsequent decisions, a pattern referred to as the sunk cost fallacy. A moviegoer who finds a film thoroughly ②disappointing after the first thirty minutes will often remain in the theater until the credits roll, reasoning that leaving early would somehow waste the money already spent on the ticket. Organizations exhibit the same fallacy on a larger scale: a company that has invested heavily in a failing project frequently ③abandons funding it, arguing that stopping the project now would render the prior investment meaningless. Yet continuing to invest in a venture destined to fail merely adds new losses to old ones, ④compounding the very waste the decision-makers hoped to avoid. Economists therefore urge decision-makers to evaluate each choice based solely on its prospective outcomes, treating past expenditures as ⑤irrelevant to the decision at hand.

A striking proportion of individual investors believe their own stock-picking ability to be above average, a statistical ①impossibility given that only half of any population can genuinely outperform the rest, yet a pattern that persists with remarkable consistency across surveys. This tendency, known as overconfidence bias, leads investors to trade more ②frequently than a more cautious assessment of their own skill would justify. Extensive research comparing the trading records of numerous individual accounts has ③demonstrated that investors who trade most frequently tend to earn substantially ④higher 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, causing 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.

Marketers have long recognized that perceived scarcity, the sense that a product or opportunity is available only in limited quantity or for a limited time, can dramatically increase its ①desirability, even when the item's intrinsic qualities remain entirely unchanged. This phenomenon, known as the scarcity effect, operates on a simple psychological principle: when something appears ②easy to obtain, people tend to infer that it must be valuable, since truly worthless items rarely generate genuine competition for possession. A retailer who labels a product as "limited edition" or displays a countdown timer beside a discounted offer exploits this inference, prompting customers to make ③hurried purchase decisions they might otherwise postpone or reconsider. Experimental studies confirm that identical products are rated as more desirable and often command ④higher prices when framed as scarce than when the same products are presented as widely and continuously available. Consumers who later reflect calmly on such purchases frequently discover that the item's actual usefulness fell well short of the ⑤urgency they experienced at the moment of decision.

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.

Long before calculus existed, the Greek philosopher Zeno constructed a series of paradoxes designed to show that motion itself might be logically impossible. (A) In one version, a swift runner named Achilles races a slow-moving tortoise that is given a modest head start, and common sense insists that Achilles will quickly overtake it. (B) Yet Zeno's argument suggests otherwise: each time Achilles closes the gap, the tortoise has already advanced a little further, generating an infinite number of smaller and smaller gaps. (C) Zeno concluded that Achilles could never actually catch the tortoise, a conclusion that modern mathematics eventually resolved by showing that an infinite series of shrinking distances can still sum to a finite total.

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.

That trajectory has continued to accelerate ever since, each new generation of vaccine technology arriving faster than the one before it. When a country physician named Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox seemed immune to smallpox, he set in motion a medical revolution without fully understanding why it worked. ( ① ) For nearly two centuries afterward, vaccine development proceeded largely by trial and error, weakening or killing a pathogen and testing whether the resulting preparation could train the immune system without causing disease itself. ( ② ) This method produced genuine successes, eventually eliminating smallpox worldwide and reducing diseases such as polio and measles. ( ③ ) Each new vaccine, however, still required years of laboratory work with no guarantee of success. ( ④ ) Advances in molecular biology eventually allowed researchers to isolate a single protein from a pathogen's surface rather than using the whole organism, producing vaccines with fewer side effects and a more predictable safety profile. ( ⑤ ) The most recent shift, toward delivering genetic instructions rather than proteins themselves, represents the latest chapter in a story that began with an eighteenth-century doctor's curiosity about a puzzling immunity among dairy workers.

This reveals an uncomfortable truth about the underlying business model itself. Social media platforms rarely show users a neutral stream of information. ( ① ) Instead, recommendation algorithms are optimized to maximize engagement, and content that provokes strong emotion tends to hold attention longer than balanced reporting ever could. ( ② ) Researchers describe this as a distorted mirror: the platform reflects not society as it truly is, but a version shaped by whatever keeps people scrolling. ( ③ ) Some platforms have experimented with reducing the visibility of outrage-driven content. ( ④ ) Yet these experiments consistently saw user engagement drop. ( ⑤ )

This prospect raises a philosophical question that medicine alone cannot answer. Devices that translate brain activity directly into digital commands have moved from laboratory experiments to real medical use, allowing paralyzed patients to control a robotic arm or type a message using thought alone. ( ① ) As the technology improves, some developers envision a future in which brain-computer interfaces extend beyond restoring lost function toward enhancing healthy minds. ( ② ) They imagine offering faster memory or expanded attention to anyone willing to undergo the procedure. ( ③ ) If a device can alter memory, mood, or decision-making, at what point does the assistance stop being a tool and start reshaping the very identity of the person using it? ( ④ ) Neuroethicists argue that mental privacy may need to be recognized as a fundamental right before this technology becomes widespread. ( ⑤ )