Robinson has authored more than seventeen books and edited over thirty volumes in a wide variety of subjects, including moral philosophy, the philosophy of psychology, legal philosophy, the philosophy of the mind, intellectual history, legal history, and the history of psychology. Among his works are An Intellectual History of Psychology (Wisconsin, 1995), Wild Beasts & Idle Humours: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present (Harvard, 1996), and Praise And Blame: Moral Realism and Its Applications (Princeton, 2002).

Robinson earned his Ph.D. from the City University of New York in Neuropsychology. His early research was in the field of psychophysics. He has previously held academic positions at Amherst College, Princeton University's Department of Psychology, and Columbia University, where he served as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Psychology. He was a visiting professor at Brigham Young University in 1999. In addition to his university positions, Robinson also served as the principal consultant to PBS and the BBC for their award-winning series The Brain and The Mind. He is on the Board of Consulting Scholars of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and is a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, Princeton, New Jersey.

Robinson is the past president of two divisions of the American Psychological Association, the Division of the History of Psychology and the Division of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. In 2001, Robinson received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of History of Psychology of the American Psychological Association, and the Distinguished Contribution Award from the Division of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology of the American Psychological Association.