영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

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.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks ①that used to require human hands. Economists have long debated whether this shift destroys jobs or simply ②transforms them. Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one ③had predicted. However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, ④given workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed at a pace that leaves little room for adjustment. For this reason, many economists argue that the real challenge is not the robots themselves, but the speed at which society ⑤is expected to adapt to them.

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent ①cannot be recovered regardless of what is decided next. In practice, however, people routinely allow such irrecoverable expenditures, known as sunk costs, ②to shape their subsequent decisions, a pattern referred to as the sunk cost fallacy. A moviegoer who finds a film thoroughly disappointing after the first thirty minutes will often remain in the theater until the credits roll, ③reasoning 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 ④have invested heavily in a failing project frequently continues funding it, arguing that abandoning 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, ⑤compounding the very waste the decision-makers hoped to avoid.

Every time a smartphone connects to a cell tower or a Wi-Fi network, it quietly records a data point that can later ①be pieced together into a detailed map of where its owner has been. Most users agree to this tracking without ②reading the fine print, assuming that a single company's database poses little threat. The real danger, however, emerges when location data from multiple sources ③combining. A pattern that reveals a person's home, workplace, and daily route can expose far more than any single app ever intended to share. Companies often argue that anonymized data cannot be traced back to individuals, yet researchers have repeatedly ④shown that a handful of location points is enough to identify a specific person. As a result, privacy experts increasingly insist that location data ⑤deserves the same legal protection as medical records.

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.

Hospitals are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence tools that can scan medical images and flag potential tumors ①faster and, in some trials, more accurately than experienced radiologists. Patients understandably welcome any technology that catches disease earlier, yet the growing reliance on these tools raises an uncomfortable legal question that hospitals have only begun to address. When an AI system misses a diagnosis that a human doctor would likely have caught, responsibility becomes ②easy to assign. The doctor may argue that they simply trusted a tool the hospital required them to use, the hospital may argue that the software company guaranteed its accuracy, and the software company may argue that no algorithm can be expected to be ③perfect. Until legal systems ④clarify this chain of responsibility, patients harmed by an algorithmic error may find themselves with no clear party to hold ⑤accountable.

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.

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.

Critics note a further irony: when something goes wrong, such as a hacked exchange or a lost password, there is often no institution left to appeal to. Blockchain technology was originally promoted as a way to remove the need for trusted middlemen, allowing strangers to exchange value directly and verify transactions through a shared, tamper-resistant ledger. ( ① ) In theory, this design distributes power away from any single institution and toward the network as a whole. ( ② ) In practice, however, a small number of large players have come to dominate many blockchain networks. ( ③ ) They control enough computing power or currency to influence outcomes that were supposed to be decided collectively. ( ④ ) Whether decentralization can survive this concentration of power remains one of the technology's most unresolved questions. ( ⑤ )

This reduction in cognitive burden, rather than a reduction in variety itself, appears to be the decisive factor in easing customers' decisions. An online retailer once tested how the size of a product display affected customer behavior. ( ① ) In one setting, customers encountered a table displaying twenty-four varieties of a specialty product, while in another setting they encountered a table displaying only six varieties. ( ② ) A larger proportion of customers stopped to sample items at the larger display, suggesting that abundance initially attracts attention and curiosity. ( ③ ) When it came to actual purchases, however, customers exposed to the smaller display were significantly more likely to buy something than those exposed to the larger one. ( ④ ) Follow-up interviews revealed that customers at the larger display often felt overwhelmed and uncertain about which option truly suited their preferences. ( ⑤ ) The retailer concluded that presenting a carefully limited selection, rather than an exhaustive one, could improve both sales and customer confidence.