Your money-donating example is a difficult one. Ideally, it would be better to anticipate this sort of thing ahead of time and intentionally create an environment where it’s ok to say “no”.
The facilitator could say something like: “this is intended as an exercise in group decision making, if you want to donate some of your own money as well to make this something you’re more invested in, you are welcome to do that, but it’s not something I expect everyone to be doing. We will welcome your input even if you’re not putting money into the exercise this time.” They could even say “I’m not adding anything myself today” to reinforce the message, and provide an ally, as in Asch’s conformity experiments.
I find that most of these situations could be diffused by forward planning and expectation setting, though admittedly this is a mental load on the person who does the forward planning. Over time it becomes more natural and a person can build up conversational habits which follow these principles though.
Your money-donating example is a difficult one. Ideally, it would be better to anticipate this sort of thing ahead of time and intentionally create an environment where it’s ok to say “no”.
The facilitator could say something like: “this is intended as an exercise in group decision making, if you want to donate some of your own money as well to make this something you’re more invested in, you are welcome to do that, but it’s not something I expect everyone to be doing. We will welcome your input even if you’re not putting money into the exercise this time.” They could even say “I’m not adding anything myself today” to reinforce the message, and provide an ally, as in Asch’s conformity experiments.
I find that most of these situations could be diffused by forward planning and expectation setting, though admittedly this is a mental load on the person who does the forward planning. Over time it becomes more natural and a person can build up conversational habits which follow these principles though.