Articles for ielts the dangers of being over-confident

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Collecting things 
About a third of people in the UK collect something. Their reasons and manner vary 
hugely. For some, like the football fan who collects club memorabilia, it is a way to 
express loyalty; for others, like the stamp collector proud of rare finds, there can be 
an obsessive streak. 
One psychoanalytical explanation for collecting is that unloved children learn to 
seek comfort in accumulating belongings; another is that collecting is motivated by 
existential anxieties – the collection, an extension of our identity, lives on, even 
though we do not. More recently, evolutionary theorists suggested that a collection 
was a way for a man to attract potential mates by signaling his ability to accumulate 
resources. 
There is also a phenomenon known as the endowment effect, which describes our 
tendency to value things more once we own them. Another is the concept of 
contagion – some collectors are attracted to celebrity belongings because these 
objects are seen as being infused with the essence of the person who owned them. 
Humans are unique in the way we collect items purely for the satisfaction of seeking 
and owning them. The desire to collect only became possible about 12,000 years 
ago, once our ancestors gave up their nomadic lifestyles and settled down in one 
location. 
New words 
Vary(v) - to be different from each other in size, shape, etc. 
Memorabilia(n) - things that people collect because they once belonged to a famous 
person, or because they are connected with a particular interesting place, event or 
activity 
Streak(n) - something that happens or is done over a period of time without a break: 
To seek(v) - to look for something/somebody