Recently, fully reversible dislocation motion was postulated to result in hysteretic nanoindentation load-displacement loops in plastically anisotropic solids. Since microcracking can also result in hysteretic loops, here we define a new parameter, reversible displacement (RD) that can differentiate between the two. For C-plane LiTaO3 surfaces and five other plastically anisotropic solids, the RD values either increase initially or remain constant with cycling. In contradistinction, for glass and A-plane ZnO surfaces, where energy dissipation is presumably due to microcracking or irreversible dislocation pileups, respectively, the RD values decreased continually with cycling.