Ask HN: How can I visualize transitions between emotions?

Hello!

I have a collection of 1050 tuples with following information:

1. Emotion 1

2. Transition Type

3. Emotion 2

"Transition type" is either "escalates to" or "de-escalates to."

I took these data from "The Emotion Thesaurus" by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

I want to create something visual which will allow me to better navigate in those emotions.

If I render these data with Graphviz Dot, I get a giant (42 MB) PNG file which is hard to navigate.

What graph algorithms can I use to transform this mess into something that I can make sense of (apart from creating separate diagrams for escalations and de-escalations which would reduce the number of edges)?

I am thinking about creating something like a subway map where you have "lines" with individual emotions being stations on those lines.

For example:

Acceptance -escalates-to-> Satisfaction -escalates-to-> Happiness

Acceptance, satisfaction and happiness would form a line.

The difference between subway lines and emotion lines is that with emotions the connections are not always bi-directional. That is, if acceptance escalates to satisfaction, it does not mean that satisfaction de-escalates to acceptance.

I appreciate any ideas.

Dmitrii Pisarenko