One idea is to “call out” the pressure you feel. “I’m having trouble saying anything because I’m worried what you will think of me.” This isn’t always a good idea, but it can often work fairly well. Someone who is caving to incentives isn’t very likely to say something like that, so it provides some evidence that you’re being genuine.
If it provides evidence that I’m being genuine, someone who isn’t being genuine would use this strategy and say the same thing. The other person knows this, so “calling out” shouldn’t provide evidence that I’m being genuine. If a person who isn’t being genuine wouldn’t use this strategy in the first place because it has a net effect of undermining their credibility, then I also shouldn’t be using this strategy since it has a net effect of undermining my credibility.
In practice this isn’t always correct (maybe people who are being genuine are a bit more likely to worry about incentives) but this consideration has a similar shutting down effect on me because we are just pushing the incentive problem to a different layer.
sure
This seems a bit speculative to me. If OP didn’t believe that would the post have looked any different?