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I agree that intent has a lot to do with whether or not you are being competitive in aikido. There are no competitions in our practice in the conventional sense (say as in most sports). However, if when practicing you resist a technique to prove to yourself or to your partner that you are better than him you are competing with him. If you resist his technique because he is missing something, I find it helps if you give him an idea about what is missing both when I am resisiting and when being resisted against, then you may actually be helping that person improve.
If I go back to my biological model, it is only competition if you take something away from the other to give yourself (or in this case you ego) a boost. But if you give something back to the person and help them reach their goal (of a better technique) how can you be seen as competing with them.
I do find it tricky to know how much to resist a technique though. Some partners seem to like a strong resistance to see if they can still do the technique while others get quickly frustrated, hopefully with experience I will learn to read which is which more quickly.
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