영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Many households save far less for retirement than conventional financial advice would recommend, not necessarily because they ①lacks the resources to do so, but because a combination of procrastination, present bias, and the discomfort of forgoing current consumption repeatedly delays the decision to begin saving. Recognizing this gap between intention and action, some economists have proposed a savings program in which employees commit today to ②allocating a portion of their future salary increases toward retirement savings, rather than being asked to reduce their current take-home pay immediately. Because the sacrifice applies only to income not yet received, the commitment ③feels far less painful than an equivalent reduction in present earnings would, making employees considerably more willing to enroll. Once enrolled, the contribution rate automatically rises with each subsequent raise, ④gradually increasing savings without requiring any further deliberate action from participants. Field trials of such programs have reported substantial increases in average savings rates over several years, alongside participant satisfaction that ⑤remains notably high.

When individuals face uncertainty about how to behave, they frequently look to the actions of others for guidance, ①assuming that a behavior adopted by many people is more likely to be correct or appropriate than one adopted by few, a tendency known as social proof. This reliance on collective behavior can be remarkably efficient, since it allows individuals ②to benefit from the accumulated judgment of a crowd without having to gather and evaluate every relevant fact themselves. However, social proof can also lead entire groups astray when the initial signal that ③trigger imitation is itself unreliable or coincidental. A restaurant that happens to attract a long line early in the evening may continue attracting customers throughout the night simply because passersby ④interpret the queue as evidence of superior quality. Financial markets exhibit an analogous pattern: investors who observe others buying a particular asset often join the buying themselves, ⑤reasoning that so many participants cannot all be mistaken.

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.

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent cannot be recovered 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. Economists therefore urge decision-makers to evaluate each choice based solely on its prospective outcomes, treating past expenditures as ___________ to the decision at hand.

Policymakers seeking to improve public welfare without restricting individual freedom have increasingly embraced an approach known as nudging, which alters the environment in which choices are made rather than mandating particular outcomes. A nudge preserves every option that was previously available; it simply arranges those options so that the choice deemed most beneficial becomes easier or more visible than the alternatives. Despite ongoing debate over its ethics, governments across many countries have adopted nudge-based programs, reporting outcomes that are frequently ___________ compared with those achieved through traditional regulation or public information campaigns alone.

Confirmation bias becomes particularly consequential in political discourse, where citizens must evaluate competing claims about complex issues. (A) As a result, exposure to more information does not necessarily produce more accurate beliefs; it can instead deepen existing divisions by giving each side additional material that appears to validate its own position. (B) Voters who favor a particular policy tend to seek out news sources and commentators who share that view, while largely avoiding those who might challenge it. (C) This selective consumption means that two people examining ostensibly the same news environment can end up with radically different, mutually reinforcing interpretations of events.

The adoption of behavioral insights into government policy has not proceeded without institutional resistance. (A) Career civil servants accustomed to designing programs around traditional levers, such as financial penalties or public information campaigns, have sometimes questioned whether small changes in wording or presentation could meaningfully influence outcomes that seemed to demand more substantial intervention. (B) Skepticism began to diminish, however, as rigorously controlled trials demonstrated measurable improvements in outcomes ranging from tax compliance to vaccination rates, providing evidence that traditional advocates could not easily dismiss. (C) As a result, many governments now require that new behavioral interventions be tested through randomized trials before wider implementation, a practice that has simultaneously built credibility for the approach and generated a growing body of reliable evidence.

Not every default setting, however, produces beneficial outcomes for the people subject to it. (A) A default that automatically enrolls customers in a costly subscription renewal, for example, can generate continued revenue for a company precisely because inertia discourages customers from canceling, even when they would prefer to stop paying. (B) This example illustrates that the power of defaults is ethically neutral in itself, capable of serving either the interests of the individual or the interests of whoever designs the choice environment. (C) Regulators in several jurisdictions have responded by requiring companies to make cancellation just as simple as enrollment, reducing the asymmetry that defaults can otherwise exploit.

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.

Yet this reluctance to accept a small certain loss often leads to a much larger loss later, when the declining trend continues unabated. Loss aversion strongly influences how investors manage their portfolios during periods of market decline. ( ① ) When the value of a stock begins to fall, many investors postpone selling, hoping that the price will rebound to its original level. ( ② ) This tendency is closely tied to the psychological discomfort of converting an unrealized loss into a realized one, since selling forces the investor to formally acknowledge the loss. ( ③ ) Research on trading behavior consistently shows that investors hold declining stocks for longer periods than rising ones, a pattern that runs counter to the basic principle of cutting losses early. ( ④ ) Financial advisors therefore encourage clients to set predetermined selling thresholds in advance, before emotional attachment to a particular price can distort their judgment. ( ⑤ ) By committing to a rule beforehand, investors can partially neutralize the emotional bias that loss aversion introduces into decision-making.