영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Time travel to the past has long fascinated physicists and philosophers alike, but it also ①generates a famously troubling contradiction. Suppose a traveler journeyed backward in time and, through some combination of accident and intention, ②prevented their own grandfather from ever meeting their grandmother. If the grandfather never had children, the traveler themselves would never have been born, which means the traveler could never ③existed to make the trip in the first place. Yet if the traveler never made the trip, the grandfather would have survived to meet the grandmother after all, ④allowing the traveler to be born and eventually travel back in time. The story therefore loops endlessly, undermining itself at every turn rather than ⑤settling into any stable outcome.

A hamburger patty need not come from a slaughtered animal at all if a small sample of muscle cells ①can be persuaded to multiply inside a steel tank. Cultured meat begins with a biopsy of animal muscle tissue, from which scientists isolate cells ②capable of dividing repeatedly, then feed those cells a nutrient broth that supplies the sugars, proteins, and minerals an animal's bloodstream would normally provide. Inside a bioreactor, the cells multiply across scaffolding ③designed to encourage them to align into fibers, gradually thickening into something that begins to resemble muscle tissue rather than a shapeless clump of cells. Supporters argue that because the process never requires raising and slaughtering a whole animal, it could ④shrink the land, water, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional meat production. Skeptics counter that producing the specialized broth at a large enough scale remains prohibitively expensive, meaning cultured meat is unlikely ⑤competing with conventional meat in price until the technology matures considerably further.

Individuals confronted with a set of options frequently ①default to whichever alternative requires no active decision at all, a tendency scholars term the status quo bias. Rather than weighing the merits of each available choice afresh, decision-makers often treat the current arrangement as a reasonable baseline simply because it already exists, even when ②switching would plainly serve their interests better. This pattern becomes especially apparent in contexts where enrollment in a program ③depend on a default setting. When employees must actively opt into a retirement savings plan, participation rates remain stubbornly low; yet when the same plan is presented as automatic unless an employee opts out, participation rises dramatically, despite the fact that the underlying financial terms ④are identical in both cases. Two forces appear to drive this asymmetry: first, the cognitive effort required to evaluate alternatives, and second, an aversion to the potential regret that ⑤might follow an active decision that turns out poorly.

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.

Policymakers seeking to improve public welfare without restricting individual freedom have increasingly embraced an approach ①known as nudging, which alters the environment in which choices are made rather than mandating particular outcomes. A nudge preserves every option that ②was previously available; it simply arranges those options so that the choice deemed most beneficial becomes easier or more visible than the alternatives. Placing fruit at eye level in a school cafeteria while keeping dessert accessible but less prominent, for instance, ③do not forbid any student from choosing dessert, yet it measurably shifts consumption patterns toward healthier food. Advocates argue that such interventions ④respect autonomy precisely because no option is removed and no penalty is imposed for choosing differently. Critics, however, contend that even subtle architectural choices exploit predictable cognitive shortcuts, ⑤raising questions about whether influencing behavior through psychological means is meaningfully different from more coercive forms of persuasion.

Before a large-scale construction project such as a highway or dam receives government approval, planners in many countries are required to conduct an environmental impact assessment, a formal process ①designed to predict and evaluate the ecological consequences of a proposed development. This process begins with a baseline survey, in which specialists ②document existing conditions, including wildlife, water quality, and air composition, so that future changes can be measured against a reference point. Analysts then model how the project might alter these conditions, ③drawn on data from comparable developments. For instance, a proposed highway that would bisect a forest might be evaluated for its potential to fragment habitats, ④disrupting migration routes on which certain species depend. If the assessment identifies unacceptable risks, planners may be required to redesign the project or adopt mitigation measures such as wildlife corridors. Critics contend, however, that assessments are sometimes treated as a bureaucratic formality rather than a genuine constraint, since developers who ⑤commission the studies retain strong influence over how the findings are interpreted.

Why do people often overvalue objects they have partly built themselves, even when the finished product is objectively inferior to something they could have simply purchased? This puzzle, which researchers named after a furniture retailer famous for selling items that require home assembly, challenges the standard economic assumption that value is determined solely by an object's inherent qualities. In a series of experiments, participants who assembled a plain storage box were willing to pay nearly as much for their own imperfect creation as they were for a professionally built version, despite being fully aware of its flaws. Labor, it seems, functions as a kind of psychological investment: once effort has been poured into a task, _______________. This tendency helps explain why consumers often prefer products that demand some degree of personal assembly, even when a comparable finished item is available at a lower price and requires no time investment whatsoever.

Students are frequently told that where they study makes little difference, provided that they put in enough hours. Cognitive research on memory retrieval, however, suggests that this advice oversimplifies an important process. (A) A striking demonstration involved divers who memorized word lists either underwater or on dry land. When tested later, divers recalled substantially more words if the testing environment matched the original learning environment. This held true regardless of which environment that happened to be. (B) According to the encoding specificity principle, information becomes intertwined with the context in which it was originally learned. Cues present during encoding therefore facilitate retrieval far more effectively than cues encountered elsewhere. (C) This finding implies that reviewing material exclusively in a quiet bedroom may not adequately prepare a student for the noisy atmosphere of an actual examination hall. Rather than assuming that memorization is a context-free process, students ought to consider deliberately varying study locations and conditions. Doing so would ensure that retrieval cues remain available regardless of how a future test is administered.

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.

This evidentiary standard, ironically, has made behavioral interventions more rigorously tested than many of the traditional programs they were designed to complement. Government adoption of behavioral insights has generally been governed by a strict evidentiary standard: officials demand proof that a proposed intervention works before authorizing its use. ( ① ) This demand led to the routine use of randomized controlled trials, in which a proposed change is tested on a small population before being rolled out more broadly. ( ② ) Such trials allow policymakers to determine with reasonable confidence whether an intervention produces the intended effect before committing significant public resources to it. ( ③ ) Many long-standing government programs, by contrast, were implemented decades ago without ever being subjected to comparably rigorous evaluation. ( ④ ) Behavioral units within government have, as a result, gradually earned a reputation for evidence-based rigor that extends well beyond their original, narrow mandate. ( ⑤ ) That reputation has, in turn, given behavioral approaches an outsized voice in policy discussions relative to their still-modest budgets.