Hogg was born in 1954 in Calcutta, India, where his parents (his father was Scottish, his mother English and Welsh) were employed at the time of his birth. When he was about two his family moved to Colombo in Sri Lanka where he attended the Overseas International School in Colombo and then the Hill School in Nuwara Eliya. In 1968 the family moved back to England. After one term at Warwick Grammar School the family moved to Bristol where Hogg attended Bristol Grammar School until he graduated in 1973. He then studied Physics for a year at the University of Birmingham, and then transferred to study Psychology and graduated with his BSc in 1977. After a year traveling around south and central America Hogg returned to England in 1978 to embark on his PhD in social psychology at Bristol University. He received his PhD (dated 1983) and taught at Bristol University for 3 years before moving to Australia in 1985 to a postdoctoral fellowship at Macquarie University in Sydney. In 1986 he moved to a faculty position at Melbourne University, and then in 1991 he moved to the University of Queensland where he remained until moving to California in 2006. He currently teaches at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.