The background you provide is helpful but doesn't really seem incompatible with Simler's essay. It seems your reading assumes that the distinction between emotional inception and cultural imprinting is the level of consciousness & rationality implied, but that is not the only interpretation.

Emotional inception vs. cultural imprinting might instead be considered a partition of the subconscious "association" space into first and second order effects, which are of course concurrent, and both of which are "quick" heuristics. Cultural imprinting is then the simulation mechanism underlying self-image manipulation, as you mention.

(as an aside, more Kruglanski references would be helpful, and maybe less ad hominem)