영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Biodegradable plastics have been promoted as a promising solution to plastic waste, since they ①are designed to decompose into natural substances rather than persist for centuries. Manufacturers derive these materials from renewable resources such as corn starch, blending them with additives that ②accelerates microbial breakdown once discarded. However, their environmental benefits are often exaggerated, largely because decomposition depends on specific conditions rarely ③found outside industrial composting facilities. For example, a bag labeled biodegradable may take years, not the weeks advertised, to break down in a landfill or ocean, where temperature and microbial activity remain low. In addition, when mixed with conventional plastics in recycling streams, they can contaminate the process, ④weakening the quality of materials produced afterward. Some engineers therefore compare biodegradable plastics to a bridge that leads nowhere unless paired with infrastructure that completes the journey. Ultimately, realizing their genuine potential requires not only technological refinement but also facilities capable of ⑤providing the precise conditions decomposition demands.

Among the many tools available to those who design choice environments, few are as quietly powerful as the default option, the alternative that ①takes effect automatically unless a person actively selects something else. Because changing a default requires deliberate effort, many individuals simply accept whatever arrangement has been preselected for them, regardless of whether that arrangement actually ②serve their interests best. This tendency has been documented across a remarkably wide range of contexts. Countries that automatically enroll citizens in organ donation programs, requiring an explicit request to opt out, consistently report far higher donor registration rates than countries that require citizens ③to actively opt in. Employers who automatically enroll new hires in retirement savings plans likewise see participation rates ④climb dramatically compared with employers who leave enrollment entirely voluntary. What makes default options so influential is not merely convenience; a default also functions as an implicit signal about what is considered normal or recommended, subtly ⑤shaping perceptions even among individuals who believe themselves to be deciding independently.

People routinely seek out information that confirms what they already believe while overlooking or dismissing evidence that ①contradicts those beliefs, a pattern known as confirmation bias. This tendency operates not because individuals are deliberately dishonest, but because the mind finds it cognitively less taxing ②to absorb information that fits an existing framework than to reconstruct that framework from scratch. Investors who believe a particular company will succeed, for instance, tend to interpret ambiguous news about that company favorably, while investors who ③are skeptical of the same company interpret identical news unfavorably, even though both groups are examining the same underlying facts. Social media platforms can intensify this effect by algorithmically presenting users with content similar to what they have previously engaged with, thereby ④narrowing the range of perspectives an individual regularly encounters. Over time, such selective exposure can harden initial impressions into convictions that ⑤feels objectively verified, even though they rest on a systematically filtered sample of evidence.

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.

When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh not only the expected outcome of each option but also how ①pleasant it would feel to discover later that a different choice had been better. This anticipation of future regret, rather than the size of the potential loss itself, frequently becomes the ②dominant factor shaping the final decision. Investors, for example, sometimes continue holding a declining stock rather than selling it, not because they expect the price to recover, but because selling would force them to confront the possibility of having made a clear mistake. Researchers have found that people feel ③sharper regret over losses that resulted from taking action than over identical losses that resulted from doing nothing, which helps explain why so many individuals default to inaction whenever a decision feels ④uncertain. Ironically, this strategy of avoiding regret can itself produce outcomes that are later regretted even more ⑤deeply than the ones it was originally designed to prevent.

Standard economic theory assumes that money is fungible, meaning that a dollar earned as salary is functionally identical to a dollar received as a tax refund or won in a lottery. In practice, however, people routinely sort their finances into separate mental accounts, treating money differently depending on its source or intended purpose, a process economists call mental accounting. The practice thus reveals that financial behavior is guided less by pure arithmetic than by ___________ that money's origin and purpose.

Anyone who has ever promised to finish a project "by Friday," only to still be working on it weeks later, has experienced the planning fallacy firsthand. This term describes the persistent tendency of individuals and organizations to 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 finished 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 ignoring the broader statistical record of similar projects that came before. One proposed remedy, known as reference class forecasting, requires planners to deliberately consult outcomes from comparable past projects rather than relying solely on their own optimistic intuition. Until such external correction becomes standard practice, _______________.

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.

Retailers have discovered practical ways to counteract the negative effects of choice overload without simply reducing the number of products they offer. (A) One common strategy involves organizing an extensive product catalog into clearly labeled categories and subcategories, allowing customers to narrow their search gradually rather than confronting the entire array at once. (B) Another approach highlights a small number of curated recommendations, such as "staff picks" or "best sellers," giving hesitant customers a reasonable starting point without eliminating other options entirely. (C) Both strategies share a common principle: they do not reduce the objective number of choices available but instead reduce the cognitive burden of navigating them.

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.