I'm disappointed that you're getting downvoted because I think you're touching on something really important, which is that 1:1s, like everything else in corporate life, have an inherently heavy atmosphere to them. The fact that you're cognizant of this shows that you have some experience under your belt. A good manager will do what he can to ease the situation, but the arrangement of the meeting is substantial and can certainly be risky.

However, while recognizing some flaws that are basically inherent in contemporary corporate structure, I believe 1:1s are extremely important. I think one of the single biggest problems organizations have is that they don't regularly check-in and explicitly solicit feedback. You get so much valuable intelligence this way, even if you're aware of the atmosphere and the incentives that loom over these meetings. The isolation and lack of data really hurt managerial efforts.

This is compounded as you go up the chain. I think that upper management should perform 1:1s all the way down every 3-6 months. This is basically checking middle management's work, something which rarely happens, and it provides the essential pieces of data that get obscured as information travels up the ladder.