Either "identity" is too vague or I don't understand how you're using it. There's no explanation of what an identity is, why or how people seek an identity, or why they would seek one instead of others. "Village idiot" is an identity and "brilliant seeker of truth" is an identity, but most people, given the choice, would try to conform to the latter.

"Living up to ideals" is a very human-level thought. Where's the mental circuitry behind it? Why would people want to live up to ideals, or even have ideals? What's my motivation?

I think you're entirely right about identity, but that identity is a high-level process that emerges out of the search for status. Exactly how is a whole other post, but I think a lot of the research you mention is in the fields of contingencies of self-worth, ie how our self-esteem comes from lots of different sources. We then value or devalue those sources in order to maximize our own self-esteem. I'm pretty smart but not too strong, so I come up with a worldview in which intellect is much more important than physical strength, and my identities, like "rationalist" and "leftist with a side of libertarianism" develop partly out of what helps me affirm that story that leads to my high status and high self-worth.

I disagree about the attitude versus results thing. One of the posts I still have to make in this sequence argues that this mechanism is what drives so many people into roles that can't receive feedback. For example, you won't find many poor people priding themselves on how rich they are, or too many stupid people priding themselves on how book-smart and well-educated they are, but anyone can pride themselves on how moral they are and how correct their political beliefs are, and most people do. Likewise, the 9-11 Truther example and other conspiracies of fact tend to form around questions that are hard to resolve.

Also, although you use the example of "shaman", there weren't that many roles in the EEA, shamans are probably a pretty late development (first ceremonial burial isn't until 100,000 BC or so), and everything else came even later.

Summary: I think you're right about roles and identity, but the goal of this post is to deconstruct "identity" into moving parts.