"Identifying with" something or "Identifying As" something has an explicit meaning to me, which is that it is something I would call myself. Some of this may come from training and industry I'm in, but it's what you think of yourself as.

For instance, someone who doodles occasionally may or may not identify "as an artist", but anyone who paints professionally almost certainly identifies as an artist. Someone who paints regularly as a hobby probably identifies as an artist; the doodler may be more idle about it and not really think of it as being an essential quality of self: It is something that person does, not something that person is.

From such lines of thinking come statements such as, "Ich bin ein Berliner." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner

Undoubtedly a point of controversy.

Examples:

• In some societies, a great many people play games, if only mobile/phone/web games. Yet only a fraction of them would "identify as gamers".
• Birth genders vs. "identification".

Or, myself: I identify as an LWer but only made an account today, and certainly haven't yet finished all of the sequences. I could feel like a bit of a poser, or worry others would call me "fake", but that's not actually relevant to my own self-identification.

You are probably one of the few people who can identify an exact year when you forgot your SAT scores.

I identify with being "mixed race" far more than any individual race (which feels distinct to me from "other", but it was still the only choice for me).

I learned/confirmed non-zero answers about myself for questions I hadn't previously/strongly considered. This could be considered a "bonus" for taking the survey.

(Finished.)