Plastic anisotropy is very common to metallic materials. This property may significantly affect the performance of structures. However, the actual orthotropic yield criterion is often replaced with a criterion based on the assumption of normal anisotropy. The present paper aims to reveal the influence of this replacement on the distribution of strains and residual strains in a thin hollow disk under plane stress conditions. The boundary-value problem is intentionally formulated such that it is possible to obtain an exact semi-analytical solution without relaxing the boundary conditions. It is assumed that the disk is loaded by external pressure, followed by elastic unloading. The comparative analysis of the distributions of residual strains shows a significant deviation of the distribution resulting from the solutions based on the assumption of normal anisotropy from the distribution found using the actual orthotropic yield criterion. This finding shows that replacing the actual orthotropic yield criterion with the assumption of normal anisotropy may result in very inaccurate predictions. The type of anisotropy accepted is of practical importance because it usually results from such processes as drawing end extrusion with an axis of symmetry.