Hi,

React compares by reference, in the setState(newState) call, you are just setting state to the same list. Changing the contents of the list doesn't change the reference to the list. When the next state is the same as the old state, React bails out on doing any work.
One quick thing you can do is to slice the array like:

const newData = oldData.slice(0);
newData[0] = 'something'
setState(newData);

Here's an even more in-depth explanation: https://pavi2410.me/blog/dont-use-usestate-to-handle-arrays-in-react, you don't have to do as they say in the article (mutating and forcing render), but it helps you wrap your head around the issue.

Reactivity by assignment just doesn't work like that in JavaScript, you need a compiler like Svelte does, or you could use a library like https://github.com/immerjs/immer which implements Proxy to achieve reactivity by assignment. Or use getters/setters.

Understanding how JavaScript works is key here, you can just try this out in your browser console:

let arr = [0,1,2,3]
let barr = arr
barr[2] = 100000
barr === arr // true

So React can't tell that it is different data, and diffing the entire list would be also not guaranteed, because the contents of list, could be references themselves (not primitive data such as numbers, strings, etc.)!

When updating your state using hooks, it's best to use callbacks.

Try updating your code:

setNames(prevNames => [...prevNames, ...newNames])

This works in the same way that prevState worked with setSate().

On to your solution, you can set the initial state within useState():

const array = [
  {
    age: 13,
    name: "Housing"
  },
  {
    age: 23,
    name: "Housing"
  }
];

const [names, setNames] = useState(() => array.map(item => item.name));

useEffect(() => {
  console.log(names);
}, []);

The problem appears to be that you're passing to useState() the array (updatedVal) that has its reference unchanged, thus it appears to React that your data hasn't been modified and it bails out without updating your state.

Try drop that unnecessary variable and do directly setCountries([...countries, obj])

Another minor fix about your code I may suggest: you may use Array.prototype.every() to make sure that every existing item has different label. It has two advantages over .filter() - it will stop looping right upon hitting duplicate (if one exists) and won't proceed till the end of array (as .filter() does), thus won't slow down unnecessarily re-render and it returns boolean, so you won't actually need extra variable for that.

Following is a quick demo of that approach:

const { useState, useEffect } = React,
      { render } = ReactDOM,
      rootNode = document.getElementById('root')
      
const CountryList = () => {
  const [countries, setCountries] = useState([])
  
  useEffect(() => {
    fetch('https://run.mocky.io/v3/40a13c3b-436e-418c-85e3-d3884666ca05')
      .then(res => res.json())
      .then(data => setCountries(data))
  }, [])
  
  const addCountry = e => {
    e.preventDefault()
    const countryName = new FormData(e.target).get('label')
    if(countries.every(({label}) => label != countryName))
      setCountries([
        ...countries,
        {
          label: countryName,
          value: countries.length+1
        }
      ])
    e.target.reset()
  }
  
  return !!countries.length && (
    <div>
      <ul>
        {
          countries.map(({value, label}) => (
            <li key={value}>{label}</li>
          ))
        }
      </ul>
      <form onSubmit={addCountry}>
        <input name="label" />
        <input type="submit" value="Add country" />
      </form>
    </div>
  )
}

render (
  <CountryList />,
  rootNode
)

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/16.12.0/umd/react.production.min.js"></script><script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react-dom/16.11.0/umd/react-dom.production.min.js"></script><div id="root"></div>

In your example, you cannot guarantee the results state has been updated at the point of your console.log(results). This is because the React state update as asynchronous and applied in batches under the hood.

If you had your console.log call under const [result, setResults] = useState([]) then it will get called on every render pass, and therefore you should see the updated value logged out once the setState function has applied your new state.

For example:

const [results, setResults] = useState([]);

console.log(results);

const submitHandler = newResult => {
  const newArray = [...results, newResult];
  setResults(newArray);
  console.log(newArray);
}

should log your new state on the next render pass.

You could also put your console.log in a useEffect which will let you know for sure that React knows your results have changed.

const [results, setResults] = useState([]);

useEffect(() => {
  console.log(results);
}, [results]);

const submitHandler = newResult => {
  const newArray = [...results, newResult];
  setResults(newArray);
  console.log(newArray);
}

This means your console.log(results) will only be called when results changed, rather then on every render.

The initial data is an array, see in countriesData variable, also in setName you try to use {}.

You should call with [] instead of {} as:

setName([ ...name, ...arr ]);