Carol Gilligan was raised in a Jewish family in New York City. She was the only child of a lawyer, William Friedman, and nursery school teacher, Mabel Caminez. She attended Walden School, a progressive private school on Manhattan's Upper West Side, played piano and pursued a career in modern dance during her graduate studies. Gilligan received her B.A. "summa cum laude" in English literature from Swarthmore College, a master's degree in clinical psychology from Radcliffe College, and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University where she wrote her doctoral dissertation "Responses to Temptation: An Analysis of Motives".