Research in political science has focused on definitions of populism, platforms of populist parties, and demographic characteristics of those who support populist parties. Yet little is known about the psychological characteristics of populist supporters and how they might differ as a function of left-right ideology. Using a measure of populist attitudes in general, we investigated the role of Big Five personality traits as well as authoritarianism, social dominance, and system justification in a nationally representative sample of French respondents. We observed meaningful variability in relations between psychological characteristics and the endorsement of populist attitudes as a function of left-right ideological orientation, as well as variability in the psychological predictors of support for Jean Luc Mélenchon (a left-wing populist) and Marine LePen (a right-wing populist). We conclude that left-wing and right-wing populists are not the same, psychologically speaking, and that the differences are consistent with the distinction between inclusionary and exclusionary forms of populism.

政治学的研究集中在民粹主义的定义，民粹主义政党的平台以及支持民粹主义政党的人们的人口统计学特征上。关于民粹主义支持者的心理特征及其根据左右意识形态的不同可能知之甚少。我们使用民粹主义态度的一般量度，在法国受访者的全国代表性样本中调查了“五大”人格特质的作用以及专制主义，社会主导地位和系统合理性。我们观察到心理特征与民粹主义态度之间的关系中的有意义的变化是左右意识形态取向的函数，以及对让·卢克·梅伦琴（左翼的民粹主义者）和马林·勒彭（右翼的民粹主义者）支持的心理预测因素的差异。我们得出的结论是，从心理上讲，左翼民粹主义者和右翼民粹主义者并不相同，而且这些差异与民粹主义的包容性形式和排斥性形式之间的区别是一致的。