영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Imagine a cafeteria where a healthy salad ①sits at eye level while fried snacks rest on a low shelf. Nobody is ②forbidden from choosing the snacks, yet most people quietly pick the salad instead. This simple technique illustrates a nudge, a concept from behavioral economics that gently ③guides people toward better choices without restricting their freedom. Companies and governments increasingly apply nudges to encourage sustainable consumption. For example, some hotels print reminders on towels stating that most guests reuse them, which ④persuade new guests to do the same and save water. Similarly, energy bills that compare a household's usage with that of efficient neighbors often lead people to reduce electricity use. Unlike strict regulations or heavy taxes, nudges ⑤rely on subtle changes in design rather than force. Critics argue nudges alone cannot solve large environmental problems, but combined with stronger policies, they can meaningfully shift everyday habits toward sustainability.

Psychologists studying human judgment often describe the mind as ① operating through two distinct systems rather than a single unified process. System 1 works quickly and automatically, ② generating 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 ③ require careful calculation or conscious reasoning. Most daily decisions are handled almost entirely by System 1, which allows people ④ to 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 ⑤ formed.

Imagine watching a fair coin land on heads five times in a row and feeling an increasingly strong intuition that the next flip is somehow due to produce tails. This intuition, though psychologically ① compelling, rests on a basic misunderstanding of probability, since each flip of a fair coin remains entirely ② independent of every flip that came before it. The coin possesses no memory of its previous outcomes, and its probability of landing on tails on the sixth flip stays ③ fixed at fifty percent regardless of how many heads preceded it. Casinos have long profited from this misconception, watching gamblers place larger bets after a losing streak simply because they ④ mistakenly believe that a win has become statistically overdue. Economists have even documented the same error among trained professionals, including loan officers who grow more likely to approve a risky application simply because they recently rejected several applications ⑤ sporadically.

Imagine two factories making the same product: one in a country with strict carbon rules, and one in a country with almost none. The factory facing stricter rules often spends more, which can make its goods pricier than those made elsewhere. To fix this imbalance, some governments have introduced the carbon border adjustment mechanism, a policy charging imported goods a fee based on how much carbon was released while producing them. Supporters argue that the system _______________. However, critics claim it unfairly burdens developing countries, which often lack money to modernize factories quickly. For example, a small exporter in a poorer nation might struggle to pay the added charge, though it contributes little to global emissions. Still, if wealthier nations pair the policy with technical support, it could become a genuinely fair tool for cutting emissions worldwide.

When people look back on a multi-day journey, they rarely recall every hour with equal clarity; instead, memory tends to compress the entire experience into just a few representative moments. Psychologists have found that two points carry disproportionate weight in this process: the single moment when emotion reached its highest intensity, and whatever happened right before the experience concluded. Consider two hikers who complete an identical five-day trek. The first finishes with a grueling, rain-soaked final climb, while the second enjoys a calm, scenic descent on the last afternoon despite having endured an equally difficult ascent earlier in the trip. Even though both hikers faced comparable hardship overall, the second is far more likely to remember the journey fondly, simply because the trip ended pleasantly. This pattern reveals that _______________.

When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh how painful it would feel to discover later that a different choice had been better. This anticipation of future regret frequently becomes the dominant factor shaping the final decision. Researchers have found that people feel sharper regret over losses that resulted from taking action than over identical losses that resulted from doing nothing, _______________. Ironically, this strategy of avoiding regret can itself produce outcomes that are later regretted even more deeply than the ones it was originally designed to prevent.

For much of the twentieth century, memory researchers assumed that once a memory had been consolidated—transformed from a fragile, short-term trace into a stable, long-term representation—it remained essentially fixed, immune to further modification unless the underlying neural circuitry was physically damaged. (A) During this narrow window, which typically lasts only a few hours, the memory can be strengthened, weakened, or even subtly distorted by new information encountered in the interim, after which it must undergo a second round of stabilization, a process now widely referred to as reconsolidation. (B) Consequently, what we experience as a stable recollection may actually be a continuously revised construction, reshaped every time it is summoned into conscious awareness and returned to storage. (C) This assumption, however, was overturned by a body of research demonstrating that the act of retrieval itself can destabilize a previously consolidated memory, rendering it temporarily susceptible to alteration before it is, in a sense, filed away again.

Food choices are increasingly recognized as a powerful tool in the fight against climate change. (A) By replacing just a few meat-based meals each week with vegetables, grains, or legumes, individuals can noticeably shrink their carbon footprint without giving up meat completely. Nutritionists also emphasize that flexitarian eating is easier to maintain than full vegetarianism, because it allows flexibility rather than demanding absolute discipline. Therefore, many environmental groups now promote flexitarianism as a realistic first step, believing that gradual change, rather than sudden restriction, is more likely to spread widely across society. (B) A flexitarian is someone who mainly eats plant-based meals but occasionally includes meat or fish, unlike a strict vegetarian who avoids animal products entirely. This flexible diet has recently gained attention as a practical way to fight climate change, since raising livestock produces a significant portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. (C) Cattle, in particular, release large amounts of methane, a gas far more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Modern consumer culture often assumes that expanding the range of available options will automatically make people freer and happier, yet a growing body of research suggests the opposite may sometimes be true. (A) Having considered so many possibilities, a person naturally imagines the specific advantages that a different, unchosen option might have offered, and this imagined comparison quietly erodes contentment with what was actually selected. (B) When individuals select from an enormous set of alternatives, satisfaction with the final choice frequently declines rather than rises, even when the chosen item is objectively excellent. (C) This decline stems not from the difficulty of deciding but from what happens afterward, once a decision has already been made.

For years, a small riverside village had suffered from flooding that grew worse with each passing summer. (A) In addition, several families whose houses stood in the most vulnerable areas relocated to higher ground, and the village installed an early warning system that sent alerts to residents' phones whenever river levels rose dangerously fast. (B) When a powerful storm struck three years later, the new measures proved effective, and the village suffered only minor damage instead of the devastating losses it had previously faced, becoming a model for neighboring communities. (C) Frustrated residents eventually decided to pursue climate adaptation, adjusting their infrastructure and habits to reduce the damage caused by increasingly unpredictable weather, and engineers began by widening the drainage canals surrounding the village so that excess rainwater could flow away more efficiently.