영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally opposed, or whether the relationship between them ①changes shape as an economy matures. The Environmental Kuznets Curve, a hypothesis ②borrowed from earlier theories of income inequality, proposes that pollution initially rises alongside economic growth before eventually declining once a society crosses a certain threshold of wealth. In its early stages, industrializing nations prioritize output over conservation, ③treats clean air and water as expendable costs of development to be addressed later. Beyond a certain point, however, rising incomes generate both the technological capacity and the political will ④to demand stricter regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. Some scholars regard this trajectory as a reassuring paradox, suggesting that the very growth ⑤blamed for ecological harm may eventually finance its own repair. Critics, by contrast, argue that the curve rests on a narrow selection of pollutants that happen to decline with wealth, while ignoring greenhouse gases and resource depletion, which show no comparable tendency to fall.

Psychologists studying human judgment often describe the mind as ①operating through two distinct systems rather than a single unified process. System 1 works quickly and automatically, ②generating impressions and snap judgments without any noticeable sense of effort, much as a driver instinctively brakes when a ball suddenly rolls into the street. System 2, by contrast, is slow, deliberate, and demanding, engaged only when a problem ③require careful calculation or conscious reasoning. Most daily decisions are handled almost entirely by System 1, which allows people ④to function efficiently without exhausting their limited mental resources. This efficiency comes at a cost, however, because System 1 relies on simple shortcuts that can produce systematic errors, and System 2 is frequently too lazy or too occupied to double-check them. As a result, a judgment often feels most confident precisely at the moment when it has skipped the careful scrutiny that could have caught its own mistake, leaving the thinker unaware of how easily the impression was ⑤formed.

When people are ①asked to judge how risky or beneficial a particular technology is, they rarely conduct anything ②resembling a careful cost-benefit analysis. Instead, they consult a quick emotional impression, an instinctive sense of whether the technology feels good or feels bad, and let that impression guide their entire judgment. This mental shortcut, ③known as the affect heuristic, produces a curious pattern that traditional risk theory struggles to explain: activities people like tend to be judged as both safer and more beneficial, while activities they dislike are judged as both riskier and less beneficial, even when no logical relationship between risk and benefit exists. For example, when researchers ④presented a fictional industrial chemical alongside a brief description emphasizing its convenience, participants rated it not only as more useful but also, illogically, as less dangerous. Because emotional impressions form so rapidly and feel so trustworthy, correcting for this heuristic requires deliberate effort; simply presenting more accurate statistics to already anxious or enthusiastic audiences rarely ⑤change their underlying judgment.

Cognitive psychologists ①distinguish between two modes by which the mind handles information, a distinction that helps explain why experienced drivers can hold conversations while navigating familiar roads without conscious effort. Automatic processing occurs rapidly, ②requires minimal attention, and typically operates outside conscious awareness, allowing multiple automatic tasks to proceed without interfering with one another. Controlled processing, by contrast, unfolds more slowly, demands deliberate attention, and can generally handle only one demanding task at a time, since it draws upon a limited pool of cognitive resources that becomes rapidly depleted under competing demands. Skills that once required intense concentration, such as reading or typing, gradually ③become automatic through extensive practice, freeing attentional resources for other purposes. This shift ④explains why novice drivers find it difficult to talk while merging onto a highway, whereas seasoned drivers manage the same maneuver with comparative ease. However, automaticity ⑤carry hidden costs, since automatized responses can be triggered inappropriately by habitual cues even when circumstances have changed, occasionally producing errors that controlled deliberation would have prevented.

A biosensor works by pairing a biological component, such as an enzyme or antibody, with an electronic device that ①convert a biological reaction into a signal a computer can read. When the target molecule, whether glucose in blood or a trace of a pathogen, ②binds to the biological component, it triggers a small measurable change that the device translates into a readable number. This design has already transformed diabetes management, ③letting patients monitor blood sugar continuously through a small sensor worn under the skin rather than pricking a finger several times a day. Engineers are now racing to extend the same principle ④to detect subtler targets, from cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream to trace contaminants in drinking water. The central challenge is not detecting the target but doing so reliably outside a controlled laboratory, since a sensor that performs well on a clean lab bench can behave erratically once ⑤exposed to a real body or a real river.

Many households save far less for retirement than conventional financial advice would recommend. Some economists have proposed a savings program in which employees commit today to allocating a portion of their future salary increases toward retirement savings, rather than being asked to reduce their current take-home pay immediately. Field trials of such programs have reported substantial increases in average savings rates. This approach demonstrates that savings policy grounded in realistic assumptions about human psychology can prove considerably more ___________ than policy grounded in the assumption that individuals will always act in strict accordance with their own long-term rational interests.

Engineers are now exploring implants and prosthetics designed to give healthy people abilities beyond ordinary human limits. Supporters frame this as simply the next step in a long history of human enhancement, no different in principle from eyeglasses or vaccines. Critics counter that earlier enhancements were broadly available to anyone regardless of wealth, while cutting-edge neural and physical implants are likely to remain expensive for decades, potentially _______________.

Marketers have long recognized that perceived scarcity can dramatically increase a product's desirability, even when the item's intrinsic qualities remain entirely unchanged. A retailer who labels a product as "limited edition" or displays a countdown timer beside a discounted offer prompts customers to make hurried purchase decisions they might otherwise postpone or reconsider. Consumers who later reflect calmly on such purchases frequently discover that the item's actual usefulness fell well short of the ___________ they experienced at the moment of decision.

When workers receive a five percent raise in a year when prices have climbed five percent as well, their real purchasing power has not changed at all, yet many still report _______________. This tendency to judge economic well-being by nominal figures printed on a paycheck, rather than by what that money can actually purchase, is known among economists as money illusion. Employers exploit this pattern by favoring modest nominal raises over deeper structural adjustments, since a visible increase on a payslip satisfies employees more effectively than an explanation about inflation could.

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.