sample JSON snippet having Sally as manager and Mike as directReport of Sally:
[{"id":"one","name":"Sally"},{"id":"two","name":"Mike","managerId":"one"}]
For entity self references the association is always created from the lower object to upper object. If import data e.g. references a manager:Person within a worker:Person and the entity Person entity has an association "manager" to itself, the association is created from the manager to the worker and therefore the worker becomes the manager of the worker. The other way arround associations cannot be read out reversed for export mappings, e.g. to render direct reports of a manager. There current workarround is to use a custom Microflow which handles the association.
Idea: For self references and if possible for directed m:n relations it would be very helpful to be able to choose which direction the association is created, similar to the reversed() option in Mendix XPath.