Abstract

The Core Emotion Framework (CEF) is a structural constructivist architecture designed to unify affective science, somatic psychology, and computational modeling through a standardized system of ten irreducible emotional operators distributed across three somatic centers: the Head (cognitive regulatory), Heart (relational affective), and Gut (conative existential). Building on appraisal theory, neurocardiac regulation, and the somatic marker hypothesis, the CEF treats emotional episodes as sequential, center specific operator activations that function analogously to instructions in a Human Operating System. Technical Specification 1 formalizes these operators through an algebraic system of activation vectors, modulation coefficients, and directed transition matrices that govern inter operator influence and system level state changes. The framework further incorporates quantum like modeling to account for non classical affective dynamics, including operator fusion, contextuality, and entanglement patterns that restrict the accessible emotional state space in psychopathology. Across 100 predicted entanglement configurations, the CEF provides a falsifiable taxonomy of maladaptive operator pairings, offering mechanistic explanations for rigidity, emotional blending, and loss of regulatory independence. Together, these components establish the CEF as a high utility structural heuristic capable of bridging clinical practice, computational affective modeling, and embodied cognition through a unified, operator level language of emotional processing.